One of our advertisers, Growquest Nursery recently ran a story on their website about Professor Peter Guengerich and Dr. Elizabeth Gillam at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who discovered an enzyme that turns plants blue. They have implanted the gene that produces the enzyme into bacteria. Now they are hoping to implant the same gene into roses to produce, ta da... a blue rose.
They will be releasing their finding in the "next" issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. The article also quotes a skeptical Dr. Peter Beales, noted author of Botanica's Roses: The Encyclopedia of Roses and president of the Royal National Rose Society, "It might be a novelty for a year or two then it will probably disappear into oblivion."
Meanwhile, those wily Japanese (or is it the wily OZzies?) have been doing some breeding of their own. According to the Japan Times, the brewer and distiller, Suntory Ltd., and Florigene Ltd., an Australian biotech firm 98.5% owned by Suntory, have successfully implanted the gene that produces delphinidin, the blue pigment in pansies into a rose. They claim the pigment in the petals of their blue rose is nearly 100% delphinidin. This duplicates their feat of producing a blue carnation in 1995 that they market under the name Moondust. Read the story in The Japan Times Online
Well, your intrepid reporter had to check this out. There is a carnation called Moondust, but it's mauve, not blue. In 1997 Florigene introduced a darker purplish carnation called Moonshadow (does that name sound familiar, rose lovers?) In 2001 they introduced carnations in a variety of colors from lavender to almost black and names like Moonaqua, Moonlight and Moonvista. I couldn't find anyone offering these for sale in the US as living plants but Steve White of Tessealaar Flowers says he sells as many blue carnation cut flowers as all the other colors combined.
Now, some of you may thinking, "But this isn't new, I've seen blue carnations since I was a kid." The blue carnations that have previously been available were created by placing white carnations in water colored deep blue with food coloring. The flower sucks up the blue dye and gradually turns blue. But it doesn't grow that way.
Making it grow blue has been a dream for Mike Dalling, who founded a biotechnology company called Calgene Pacific in Australia in 1986. By 1991 they had isolated the delphinidin-producing gene from petunias and began injecting it into carnations. By 1995 they had developed Moondust and had failed repeatedly to duplicate that feat with roses. After Calgene patented their blue carnation they bankrupted a Dutch firm called Florigene that had also been trying to develop a blue carnation. Calgene bought their assets and changed its name to Florigene. So now Florigene is taking over the world, right?
Not hardly. According to this article in The Age life has been tough for bio-engineers. According to Mike Dalling, "Like a lot of start-up companies, we were always broke. There was relentless financial pressure. We thought that once we had a blue carnation the world would be at our feet. But instead, we lurched on." In 1994 Dalling left Calgene to join rival biotechers Nufarm. By 2000 Calgene, now called Florigene was on the brink of bankruptcy and was taken over by Nufarm. Then they skidded downhill until the Florigene division was sold to Suntory in December, 2003.
It's hard to import genetically manipulated plants so that leaves an opening for American Guengerich and his research partner Gillam (surprise, Gillam is also from OZ!). Their problem right now seems to be to contain the blue color to the petals. So far they have seen blue stems, blue thorns and blue leaves according to this article in The Tennessean. Anyway, it looks like a real blue rose is on the horizon. This could be the event that revitalizes interest in rose growing, which has been on the wane in recent years.
Useless Carnation Trivia: The carnation is the national symbol of Slovenia. Koreans put three carnations in a young girl's hair to tell her fortune. If the bottom bloom dies first the girl will have a hard time her whole life. If the top flower dies first only the end of her life will be hard. If the middle then she will have trouble in her youth but then life will improve.
