Rough Roads

Conquering the local market and impressing international clients demand more from producers. The challenges of the trade include the ability to deliver bigger orders and adherence to more rigid quality control.

Mrs. Juliana Tactac of Diffun RIC lamented how her basic-dyed flowers faded after only a short time. Ms. Joyce Leal of J’s Craft also recounted how she was so disappointed when her flowers could not stand prolonged exposure to sunlight. Some others have experienced irreproducibility of their desired color shades. One instance, a group of producers got a bulk order for a certain shade of red. Using their old dyeing technology, which did not involve measurements, different batches of dyed leaves produced different shades. Ultimately, they were not able to obtain uniformly colored flowers, thus getting rejected was the painful prize. Other concerns included ineffective dye penetration, tedious scouring and bleaching processes, poor colorfastness to light, and inability to deliver bulk orders. These undoubtedly brought and still bring the accelerating industry to rough roads as if testing it can maintain its momentum.

Before the colorful flower industry totally diversified the producers, they resolved to address the problems at once. They sought the assistance of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) through the Provincial Science and Technology Office (PSTO) in Diffun. Ms. Sylvia Lacambra, PSTO of Quirino, referred their query to PTRI. The Institute came up with a technology designed to address the technical considerations of production. It has optimized and packaged a pretreatment technology, which includes a scouring and bleaching technique and an alternative color application process using synthetic acid dyes.