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Scientists Create True Blue Rose

For the first time, a genetically engineered rose has achieved a true blue color, a feat previously thought impossible due to the flower's natural pigment limitations.

Roses naturally produce red and yellow pigments but lack the enzyme necessary for creating blue pigments. In 2004, researchers first modified a rose to produce blue pigment, but the flowers appeared purplish.

Naturally blue flowers, like irises, utilize blue pigments and also require colorless co-pigment molecules called flavone C-glycosides to stabilize the pigments and deepen the blue hue. Roses lack the genes for these helper molecules.

Suntory researchers have now inserted four genes from other blue flower species into a light pink rose. These genes enable the rose to produce multiple blue pigments and the essential co-pigment molecules.

The combination of the blue pigment malvidin with a helper molecule called isoorientin resulted in bluer flowers compared to those producing only delphinidin. Higher levels of co-pigments correlated with bluer flowers.

The engineered roses, rated as violet blue on a color chart, have consistently produced blue flowers for seven years in Japanese greenhouses and three years in Colombian fields. The team aims to further refine the color.

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