New dahlia variety cultivated for 2020 Games | #AsiaNewsNetwork

New dahlia variety cultivated for 2020 Games | #AsiaNewsNetwork
Courtesy of the Hanawa town government: A dahlia of the Medalist variety, which has begun to be cultivated with an eye on the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games
Courtesy of the Hanawa town government: A dahlia of the Medalist variety, which has begun to be cultivated with an eye on the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games
Published 25 March 2019

Tokyo (The Japan News) - Cultivation of a new variety of dahlia named “Medalist” began this month in Hanawa, a town in southern Fukushima Prefecture, for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020.

People in the town concerned with the project hope that the flowers will be used for victory bouquets, which are given to athletes on the podium when they win medals. This is why the variety was named Medalist.

For the sake of evacuees in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, residents of the town are upbeat. One of them said, “We want to encourage [evacuees] with the flowers symbolizing this town.”

On March 9, a planting ceremony for bulbs of this variety was held in a plastic greenhouse in the town. About 30 people, mainly local farmers, participated in the ceremony.

Cultivation of the variety, which produces flowers of mixed red and gold color, has fully begun. A town government official who has been in charge of dahlia cultivation for more than 15 years said, “This is a new challenge.”

The flowers of this dahlia variety, each of which is about 12 centimeters in diameter, will bloom in June.

Cultivation of dahlias in the town began in 1998 with the aim of making them a tourism resource. It became popular to use fields for dahlia cultivation, and in 2010 farmers shipped 40,000 dahlia blooms, expecting demand for them as cut flowers to grow.

The town did not suffer any remarkable damage in the earthquake the following year, but it received inquiries over a fear of whether it was negatively impacted by the nuclear disaster.

Later, there was a downward trend in the volume of dahlia production, partly due to the aging of local farmers. But exports of the flowers to China, which started last year, have been favorable.

To further promote dahlias as a local specialty, the town decided to take up the challenge with an eye on the Tokyo Games.

Farmers and others plant dahlia bulbs of the Medalist variety together on March 9 in Hanawa, Fukushima Prefecture.

Relevant people from the town visited Akita International Dahlia Garden in Akita, which is one of the most famous sites in the nation for breeding the plant, in September last year.

They took note of this particular variety as they felt that the shape and color of the flowers look like gold medals, and subsequently named it Medalist.

According to the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there is discussion as to whether the use of victory bouquets will be revived, as they were not used at the previous Games in Rio de Janeiro.

But the town has set a goal of shipping 150,000 flowers next year. Also eyeing the possibility that the town’s dahlias will be used in the Rugby World Cup in September this year, it aims to increase the number of dahlia bulbs and raise the town’s name recognition.

Town Mayor Hidetoshi Miyata said, “In the language of flowers, dahlias signify gratitude. When many foreign people come to Japan during the Olympics, we want to express our gratitude for aid received at the time of the earthquake disaster.”
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005614099