Syngenta Flowers Inc. announced May 14 from its offices in Greensboro, NC, that it will offer 123 new and improved varieties in 2012-13 from Goldsmith Seeds and GoldFisch Vegetative.

In a news release, the company said it is adding more color, choices and versatility to every growing season to better meet the diverse needs of its customers.

The news release quoted Keelan Pulliam, head of Syngenta Flowers, noting, “In developing the new varieties, we really focused on our customers’ core needs within the growing seasons to maximize their profitability.”

The Chain of Life Network, a website specializing in post-harvest research on plants and flowers is up and running again as founder George Staby negotiates with several individuals, companies and organizations interested in taking over its operations as Dr. Staby retires, he told The Produce News in early May.

The website went dark in April because of uncertainty about its continuation after Dr. Staby retired, but with the recent interest shown by several entities, the site has been reopened.

This industry is all about relationships and nothing illustrates that better than the entry of Ciruli Bros. LLC in Nogales, AZ, into a red fruit mango deal this summer.

Like the Three Tenors of musical fame, the three gurus of horticulture will perform at a four-hour summit on how retailers can position their firms for the future at the OFA Short Course July 14-17 in Columbus, OH.

More than 4,000 boxes of flowers aboard a Centurion MD11 cargo plane landed in Miami early May 15 and unloaded Colombia’s first products to enter the United States under the new Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia.

A Floriculture Sustainability Initiative based in the Netherlands aims to produce a tool to eliminate duplication and make it easier to compare various certification programs. The new effort will be launched during Floriade 2012, its founders announced in a news release. Floriade is a world horticulture expo held every 10 years in the Netherlands. This show’s venue is in Venlo, Netherlands. It opened in April and will run through Oct. 7.