Roses are BLUE

Did you receive a blue rose for Valentines' or hoping for your prince charming to give you a big bouquet of blue roses?

Roses are red, that is what we all know. Roses also come naturally in colours such as white, yellow and pink. Now we have man-made roses which are champagne (yellow orange) and blue! Blue roses were dyed in the past. However recently, they can be grown naturally using genetic engineering!

Blue is a particularly difficult colour to achieve because of the complex genetic and environmental cues. The pigment that makes some other flowers (eg. carnation) blue is called delphinidin, but roses lack the genes to produce it.

The blue rose that was successfully created was made by introducing blue genes extracted from pansies (picture on left). Differing from previous efforts to produce blue roses through existing hybridization technology, the petals of the roses were altered so that they were composed almost entirely of delphinidin, making it possible to breed varieties more susceptible to hybridization. While the rose is referred to as "blue," its actual color is closer to blueish-purple. The RNAi technology is used to remove the gene encoding the enzyme dihydroflavonol reductase (DFR) in roses. Simply saying, the gene functions of the plant was manipulated.

*Delphinidin is a primary plant pigment. Delphinidin gives blue hues to flowers like violas and delphiniums. It also gives the blue-red color of the grape and can be found in cranberries.*

So we can all look forward to more blue roses in the florists soon!!