In 2005, Bollywood diva and beauty queen Aishwarya Rai Bachan was honoured by the Netherlands government with the naming of a variety of tulips (national flower) from the Keukenhof Gardens, after her.
Asked why she was being bestowed the honour, a top official of the Netherlands government had told the media that Aishwarya was “a symbol of Indian beauty” and that “a special hue of Netherland’s prized tulips was nurtured by researchers” for the occasion.
Closer home in Hyderabad in end of October in an interesting departure, K&K Orchids of Manipur, a horticulture company has honoured the IKP Knowledge Park by naming one of its hybrid orchids after it.
Incubated as a startup in the Hyderabad- based, IKP Knowledge Park, K&K Orchids Pvt Ltd (Kwaklei & Khonggunmelei Orchids Pvt. Ltd.) named one of its recently developed and popular hybrid orchids as “Phalaenopsis IKP Knowledge Park”.
The Naming Norms
Normally, new flower, plant or animal species are given a scientific name in honour of an important person, the discovering scientists, specially botanists or taxidermists. The naming after important people was called a patronym. There were exceptions too with the names going to royalty, which supported to celebrities and politicians too in recent times.
Globally, celebrities, Lady Gaga (fern), Beyoncé (horsefly), Prince Charles, now King ( a Clematis) , Richard Attenborough (40 species), Barak Obama (spider), Kate Winslet (beetle), Marilyn Monroe (a tribolite), have plant or animal species named after them.
In India, a medicinal plant found in the foothills of Darjeeling by the Botanical Survey of India was named as ‘Drypetes Kalamii after, A P J Abdul Kalam, former India President. Similarly, a flowering plant discovered in Kolhapur district of Maharastra in 2021 was named ‘Argyreia sharadchandraji’, after Sharad Pawar, the President of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
However, not often does one come across an Institution being honoured with this sort of recognition. In that way, the gesture by the Manipur company is rather rare.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), London there are 19 orchid varieties registered with them. “We are the only private organisation/Institution named after a hybrid orchid,” says Deepanwita, Chairman and CEO of the IKP Knowledge Park.
“The flower looks heavenly and to me it captures the essence of IKP’s role as an innovation ecosystem builder, with the deep magenta core representing IKP and the soft white petals with pink radiance as the ecosystem,” said Deepanwita.
The co-founders of K&K Orchids, Dr Rajkumar Kishor & Ms. Thoudam Kebisana made this announcement at the recently held IKMC 2022 on Oct 29-30 in the city. Dr. Rajkumar Kishor said, “It has been our desire to honour IKP that supported us to ignite our dream of establishing an orchid breeding lab, and we are happy that we could do so today”.
The only other instance where an Institution gets such recognition is the Papilionanda IBSB Gem orchid variety named after the Institute of Bioresource and Suatainable Development, Imphal. Rest of them listed in the RHS are named after scientists and important people, including Dr M S Swaminathan, Prof T N Khoshoo, Dr Manju Sharma and Najma Heptulla.
The International Plant Names Index has a systematic method of naming and registering new varieties and the nomenclature. It is updated daily and at present there are 1,433,000 plants species registered.
Kwaklei and Khonggunmelei Orchids Pvt. Ltd. is a biotech company established with a vision to sustainably utilize the orchid resources of India, particularly those of NE. It was started in 2013 to produce hybrid orchids with high commercial potential in terms of cut flower and pot flowers. The startup received the Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) funding from BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), for the project.
It set up a plant tissue culture laboratory and IKP Knowledge Park provided virtual incubation. The startup has since raised follow-on funding and commercialised their orchid business.
IKP Knowledge Park (IKP) is the first not-for-profit wet lab Research Park and incubator in India, head-quartered in Genome Valley, Hyderabad.
It was established in 1999 on a 200-acre campus by ICICI Bank in partnership with the State Government of then Andhra Pradesh, under a first of its kind public-private partnership model.
In the last 22 years of operations IKP has supported over 1,300 companies, startups and innovator projects by providing facilities, mentorship, IP services and seed funding, says Dr Deepanwita.
A Startup Product Exhibition where 80 selected startups in healthtech, medtech, biopharma, industrial biotech, agritech and AI & ML from across India presented their technologies at the IKMC 2022
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