1 Quality and Productivity Improvement of Wax Flowers

Waxflower (Chamelacium Uncinatum) originates in west Australia and includes more than 20 species. Waxflower is mainly used as bouquet filler. In Israel there is 200 hectare of Waxflower cultivars grown in open fields with an average annual yield of 350,000 flowers per hectare. The growing processes of Waxflowers are labor intensive, and the large numbers of workers involved in the various operations cause bottlenecks that affect costs and working efficiency. The main bottleneck points are in the sorting and packaging stages that take about 60- 80 % of the total time invested in the production process. Work efficiency improvement is extremely important due to the high dependency and unstable availability of manpower. The objectives of the present study were to improve work methods of Waxflower farms, to increase productivity and quality and to develop an optimal branch cutting methodology in order to maximize the total revenue. The research was performed during the years 2005 – 2006 in two modern farms in the southern part of Israel. The farms consist of 7 and 13 hectare of various species of Waxflowers in open fields. On each farm, work studies and time measurements were performed in the various stages of sorting and packaging, and an optimal brunch cutting methodology was developed. The results showed that the sorting station yield was 1781-2113 flowers per hour depending on the cultivar. As for the binding station, it was found that one-step binding bundles of 25 flowers each is more efficient than binding five bundles of five flowers each (two steps)