My interview guest today is Lennart Johnsen from Syngenta flowers. Lennart has over 40 years of experience working with ornamental plants, and all these years he has been dealing also with Pelargoniums. Today he is technical lead at Syngenta flowers, taking care of plant testing and production following Syngenta’s breeding programs of ornamental plants. Syngenta flowers provides plants for about 20% of the European Pelargonium market and 30% of the Swedish Pelargonium markets. In this interview I asked Lennart - How breeding programs for Pelargonium are looking like today - What traits (characteristics) the breeders are looking for to create - How long it takes to create new Pelargonium hybrids that reach our flower shops - How long a hybrid can be maintained without undergoing genetic shifts and changing in shape, colour or other aspects - What the biggest challenges in Pelargonium breeding and cultivation are today - Whether genetic modification technology is used in Pelargonium breeding - Where you can find Syngenta’s popular interspecific hybrid pelargoniums such as the “kärlekspelargon” I interviewed Lennart while he was on a travel to Portugal to one of Syngenta’s Pelargonium facilities. The interview gives lots of insights into the perspective of the ornamental plant industry and, I hope, will broaden your view on Pelargoniums even more. I would like to apologize for the suboptimal sound of the interview and I hope you will anyways enjoy it.