Floriculture

Purpose

The Floriculture Career Development Event is designed to promote the study of and interest in the production and retailing of flowers, plants and foliage through the agricultural education curriculum.

Objectives

Identify floriculture and bedding plant materials.
Identify and understand the treatment of unhealthy plants due to pest, nutritional, mechanical or chemical injury.
Understand the biological and scientific principles and develop the skills underlying propagation, growth requirements, growing techniques, harvesting, marketing and maintenance of established floriculture plants.
Understand principles and develop skills of floral design.
Identify and select appropriate supplies and equipment for the flower shop and greenhouse.
Understand and demonstrate the use of safety procedures and practices in floriculture operations.
Operate and maintain appropriate equipment for floriculture operations.
Understand and demonstrate interpersonal skills necessary for successful employment in the floriculture industry.
Understand and demonstrate proper sales and customer service skills.
Understand general business practices appropriate to the floriculture industry.

Event Rules

A school may enter only one team, consisting of four members, in this event. The score for a team will be calculated from all four members’ accrued points.
A school without a team may enter up to three individuals to compete for individual awards.
All contestants, whether participating as a team member or individual will participate in ALL of the following events:
1. Identification of Plant Materials
2. General Knowledge Examination
3. Problem-Solving/Decision-Making (with approximately 1/3 mathematical computations, 1/3 pests, weeds, & disease disorders, and 1/3 handling hazardous situations and pesticide safety).
4. Making an arrangement, corsage, or dish garden
Only those students who are competing will be allowed to participate in this event.
Under no circumstances will any participant be allowed to touch or handle plant material during the event except when instructed by the event staff.
Any assistance given to a participant from any source during the event, other than a floriculture official, will be sufficient cause to eliminate the team from the event.

Event Format

Team Make-Up

An entry of one team consisting of four members OR up to three individuals per school.

Equipment

Students are responsible for bringing their own clipboard free of notes or paper, pens and pencils, and a basic calculator. (No cell phone calculators may be used.) Clipboards must be clean and free of notes or paper.
Event superintendent will provide Floriculture Scansheet and Floriculture ID Lists

Event Schedule

Each contestant shall complete the event in the time allotted:

Identification of Plant Materials — 40 minutes
General Knowledge Examination — 50 minutes
Problem-Solving/Decision-Making — 50 minutes
Arrangement, Corsage, or Dish Garden Practicum —Up to 20 minutes

Identification of Plant Materials (200 points)

Each contestant will be required to identify 40 specimens (5 points each)
from the “Oklahoma State Floriculture CDE Plant List.”
Contestants must bubble the ID number, representing the appropriate name, next to the number of the specimen being identified on the scan sheet.
Duplicate specimens may be used and may be represented by potted plants, cut flowers and/or a leaf or stem sample, but NOT bulbs.
Each participant will be allowed 1 minute per station – do not look ahead or skip over specimens. Participants will not be allowed to move ahead until directed to do so.
All participants will participate in this activity.

General Knowledge Examination (200 points)

This portion of the event will consist of 50 questions (4 points each), addressing basic horticultural knowledge, with a focus on floriculture.
Questions will be written using the CIMC Introduction to Horticulture, 3rd Edition or CIMC Greenhouse Management & Operations.
Questions may be multiple-choice, true-false, and/or matching format(s).
Each participant will be allowed 50 minutes to complete this phase of the event.
All participants will participate in this activity.

Problem-Solving/Decision-Making (100 points)

Each participant will solve 20 multiple-choice problems (5 points each) related to the various aspects of the floriculture industry.
Each problem will describe the situation or create the problem, and provide possible solutions to the problem.
The participant must decide on the best possible solution to the problem.
All materials necessary to solve the problem will be available to the participant as he/she solves the problem.
This portion of the event will also include questions related to pests, weeds, and disease disorders (located in the CDE pest, weeds, and disorders list), handling hazardous situations including pesticide safety, or determining how a producer and/or retailer could have avoided creating the exhibited fault.
Each participant will be allowed 50 minutes to complete this phase of the event.
All participants will participate in this activity.

Practicum (150 points)

Make a floral arrangement, single flower corsage, or dish garden.
Using the materials provided, participants will be allowed 20 minutes to complete their practicum activity and itemized bills. The event assistant at the beginning of the practicum will provide participants the RETAIL price of the plants that they will use. The MARKUP will be built into the retail price. When the participant has determined the total price, he or she has included the markup. The retail cost of plants given to the participant will be determined after polling florists/garden centers to determine their current retail prices on the plants used in the event. Scoring criteria are presented on the arrangement, corsage, and dish garden practicum scorecards, which will be recorded by a judge.

Scoring

Identification of Plant Materials - 200
General Knowledge Examination - 200
Problem-Solving/Decision-Making - 100
Practicum* - 150

*The practicums will be scored using the rubrics from the 2017-2021 National Floriculture CDE Handbook. The total scores will be multiplied by 2 for Corsage or Dish Garden, and 1.5 for a Floral Arrangement in order to get to the 150 points, as score sheets are only worth 75 and 100 points, respectively.

Total Points
Individual - 650
Team - 2600

Tiebreakers

Ties for team awards will be broken using the following criteria:

The team with the higher score in the identification section wins. If still tied:
The team with the higher score on the written test wins. If still tied:
The team with the higher score on the problem-solving.

Ties for individual awards shall be broken by substituting the word “individual” wherever the word “team” appears above.

References

These suggested links are to help you study for the CDE. There are many good study sources; the links are by no means the only sites that will be helpful in your studies.

Introduction to Horticulture Third Edition, CIMC, Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Greenhouse Management & Operations. 2006. CIMC, Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Oklahoma FFA Floriculture CDE Pests and Disorders ID List
Plant disorders identification:
http://vegipm.tamu.edu/imageindex.html
Diseases of Greenhouse Ornamental Crops
http://www.greenhouse.cornell.edu/pests/index.htm
http://www.umass.edu/umext/floriculture/fact_sheets/pest_mana ge ment/plantdis.html
Diagnosing Plant Problems
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg441
Junior Master Gardener material from Texas A&M

Supplemental Materials and Forms

Oklahoma FFA Floriculture CDE ID List Floriculture Scansheet (Universal C 705C-1)Floriculture Scorecard