Blue Roses, Do They Exist?
By Harry Grazer
The elusive blue rose is finally on the market, at least this is what Japan is claiming. Although there some on today's market they are not true roses, as they are cross bred. Japan claims it has come up with the true blue rose when their scientist extracted a gene that produces a blue pigment in pansies and activated it inside roses. The gene or the enzyme that produces the blue pigment called delphinidin and is not found in rose petals to begin with. According to the company that produced this blue flower, the rose contains nearly one hundred percent of the blue pigment.
The reason that it has not been brought onto the market yet is because to get a true
blue one they have to find out how to bring the blue pigment into the rose without altering the rose itself and up until now this has not been done. There are blue colored roses on the market, but these are not the most sought after one that has become the quest of every scientist. These are cross breeds and do not meet the standards of the blue rose itself.
Roses come in many beautiful colors such as pink, red, white, peach, but until now no one has found the way to make a true, blue one which has made the quest among breeders almost mystical. This discovery was found in a very off the beaten path when the biochemist that worked for a drug company that was researching Alzheimers stumbled upon the answer. When trying to find out how the human liver breaks down drugs they came across a startling effect.
When the liver enzyme moved into the bacterium, the bacterium turned blue and being aware of this, the scientist of the world that were interested in making blue flowers they submitted their findings. The idea was to move the enzyme into the plant to produce a blue flower.
The question is if this is truly the rose that all have been seeking or is it once again the
results of cross breeding? Only time will tell and regardless of the claim, the
quest will continue until they have found the one and only true one.
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