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SV EXTERIOR: hotel entrance with sign of 9th World Orchid Conference.
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2.
SV: conference delegates seated in hall.
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3.
SV: Orchid experts addressing delegates (2 shots) (SILENT)
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4.
SV: Orchid growers attending to their plants. (3 shots) (SILENT)
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5.
CU: various orchid plant. (6 shots) (SILENT)
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SV: grower crossbreeding orchids by taking pollen from one plant and putting it into another (5 shots) (SILENT)
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7.
CU AND SV: seeds being taken from plant and placed in sterilised tube. (4 shots) (Silent)
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8.
SV: orchid ??? at exhibitions of flowers. (7 shots)
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Initials RH/1855



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: International flower experts who have been gathering in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have just ended a week-long conference devoted to the care and development of orchids....one of the world's most prized flowers.

SYNOPSIS: The conference, held in Bangkok hotel, attracted some 2,000 experts from 42 countries and other 200,000 people who just like to look at orchids.

Thailand is one the largest orchid producers is South East Asia....and orchid production is a valuable foreign exchange earner. A good-sized bloom rarely fetches less than 40 dollars. And the cost of each bloom isn't surprising, when one considers that virtually all of them are hybrids, the results of years. of cross-breeding.

To produce a perfect bloom Thai orchid growers have spent years patiently cross breeding generation after generation of plants by transferring the pollen of one to another bloom. That's the start of a process which can take anything up to five years to complete.

Later, the seeds are removed from the fostering plant and put into special and tubes containing nutrient to make them grow. The next stage is to transfer the growing seedlings into post of soil, where they'll stay until they've fully grown.

Today, there are well over 25,000 different orchid hybrids, and that's not counting the thousands of blooms which have naturally cross-pollinated and now grow wild in the countryside. Orchid-growing is also a hobby fast increasing in popularity...and just how popular it is becoming can readily be seen by the fact that just under a quarter-of-a-million enthusiasts visit the Bangkok conference's exhibition during its week-long run.