Geometry of horospherical varieties of Picard rank one

We study the geometry of non-homogeneous horospherical varieties. These varieties have been classified by Pasquier and include the well known odd symplectic Grassmannians. We focus our study on quantum cohomology, with a view towards Dubrovinu0027s conjecture. In particular, we describe the cohomology groups of these varieties as well as a Chevalley formula, and prove that many Gromov-Witten invariants are enumerative. This enables us to prove that in many cases the quantum cohomology is semisimple. We give a presentation of the quantum cohomology ring for odd symplectic Grassmannians and construct an exceptional collection with the expected number of elements in a special case of the classification which is associated with the group $G_2$.