Best New Cultivar Exhibitor/Breeder Awards

In May 2005 the BSI Board of Directors decided to create biennial awards to recognize breeders’ new creations and exhibitors’ competitive entries of new cultivars, also to promote further excellence in breeding and showing.

Awards

1) Four separate awards are to be presented:

a) Best New Cultivar Exhibitor, Hobbyist.

b) Best New Cultivar Exhibitor, Commercial.

c) & (d) Best New Cultivar Breeders of above winning entries, which may be hobbyist-bred or commercially bred in either section (a) or (b).

Assessing the Winners

1) Only competitive entries at World Bromeliad Conference standard shows are eligible. Qualifying entries from standard classes are automatically included in these separate awards.

2) Qualifying entries are to be judged by a panel appointed by the WBC Judges Chairperson.

3) Entries are judged based solely on the cultivar’s uniqueness compared to all other known cultivars.

Award Rules

1) Cultivars that have been registered, or that are able to be registered, are eligible.

2) Species cultivars and hybrid cultivars are both eligible.

3) Eligible cultivars must have been produced in cultivation, not wild-collected.

4) Hobbyist exhibitors and commercial exhibitors compete for separate awards.

5) Eligible entries must have been either:

a) registered in the Bromeliad Cultivar Registry within the previous 5 years, or,

b) bred from seed within the last 8 years, or,

c) developed as vegetative sports within the last 8 years.

Call for Sponsorship

The BSI Board is seeking individual and corporate sponsors for these awards, which would carry the sponsor’s name in the title(s). The length of sponsorship contract and the type of prizes-whether plaques, certificates, trophies, or medallions, are negotiable.

Interested sponsors should contact BSI President Jay Thurrott at president@bsi.org.

Geoff Lawn, BSI Director, Australia