The flower of love in blue by Zuzana Zelenakova

Let's face it, red roses are bit of a cliché for an anniversary gift. If you want to be really original the Japanese company Suntory can help you with that. The thing is it created the world's first genetically modified blue roses and plans to release them to the market next year as it stated on Monday. In 2004, Suntory Ltd., which is also a major distiller and beverage manufacturer, in cooperation with Australian company Florigene (mostly owned by Suntory) managed to achieve something that had long been considered almost impossible. It took 14 years for Japanese and Australian researchers to come to the final conclusion. The team created blue roses by implanting genes for blue pigment delphinidin extracted from pansies. Roses originally lack the genes to produce it, which is why it was so difficult to produce blue ones. But now the roses contain almost 100 percent of the blue pigment. According to Suntory's spokesman Kazumasa Nishizaki, the company hopes to sell several hundred thousand of them every year. "As its price may be a bit high, we are targeting demand for luxurious cut flowers, such as for gifts," he said. Suntory has been growing the blue roses also in Australia and USA to get approval for sale there but so far there is no progress in the matter.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204/sc_afp/lifestylejapanbiotechflower_080204065040;_ylt=Akrm4ZIDGre9vsG7g05J5Gis0NUE

by Zuzana Zelenakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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