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Blue Book also left a lot of cases unidentified. Has anyone checked whether this pigment stays blue as the petals age? Copigment complexes usually depend on pH, so I'd guess it drifts purple within days.
I think it’s interesting they noted the flowers stopped making the new pigment in the wild after 3 years - is it a genetic treatment that requires repeated intervention to maintain the effect?
I’m also guessing the new genes don’t propagate to the seeds as well, so that they can have a steady demand for their special flowers.
No, the trial was only conducted for three years, presumably because that's how long they budgeted. I don't think they actually stopped producing blue flowers at that point.
I think it's certain the seeds will not 'come true' -- the story suggests they spliced a little something in from every known blue flower -- gentian, delphinium, campanula etc etc Don't know for sure but feel: good luck hitting all the keys with recombination! Once they have a plant they like with all their gene-splicing tech, there would be as many ways of propagating as with e.g. named apple varieties'.
My impression from other stories is that they are certainly preparing commercial release, they just stopped the experiment (somehow there is scientific involvement see https://pub.confit.atlas.jp/en/event/ihc2026/presentation/S1...). They had an earlier 'blue' rose var "Applause" - which in the photos does not come close to this strange one https://www.suntoryapplause.com It was apparently used only by commercial growers for superfancy florists.
Blue or blue-tending flowers photograph really badly, on Kodachrome as on the internet, so nothing is to be really credited til you see it in life. If you type 'heavenly blue morning glory' in the browser you will see faked images - the real thing is nevertheless perfectly astonishing.
In general a blue effect, like the Heavenly Blue or the astounding mecanopsis, Himalayan poppy - once seen, never forgotten, in USA grown in Pacific NW only - involves more than just pigment but other ancillary curiosa like ferric ions trapping unfriendly wavelengths. The gene splicing was from several 'blue' flowers, but in some cases, if I follow, they were targeting these ancillaries, not the pigment.
This is why hybrids need to be re-bred with themselves many many generations in order to stabilize the phenotype. The genetic info may still be there but not expressing itself
Commercial roses are cloned from cuttings anyway, nobody grows them from seed, so the seed question is moot. Silencing in the field is the actual risk, same as any config that quietly drifts.
We did this for training videos. Clipped to a shirt, a lav picks up rustle and sounds thin and roomy. Holding it a few inches from your mouth fixes that for ten bucks, no boom arm needed.
No matter how many times this gets reposted, which seems like several times a year for the last few years, no they haven't figured out how to make a true blue rose.
> Suntory Global Innovation Center Ltd. (SIC) presented new research findings toward the realization of bluer roses at the 32nd International Horticultural Congress (IHC2026), held in Kyoto in August 2026.
> ...
> Suntory began its blue rose research in 1990. Roses naturally lack a key gene required to produce delphinidin, the blue pigment found in many blue flowers. In 2004, Suntory Group became the first in the world to develop roses that accumulate delphinidin by introducing a gene that enables roses to produce this pigment. This achievement led to the launch of SUNTORY blue rose APPLAUSE in 2009. Since then, SIC has continued its research toward even bluer roses by exploring the various mechanisms that create blue flower colors in nature.
> In this study, the researchers explored a new approach to achieving bluer flower colors by focusing on the effect of copigmentation.
That would be akin to: Linux 7.2 released (1991)
Note the difference in the science journalism title and the more closely related release https://www.suntory.com/sic/story/20260911/ "Beyond the “World First”: Opening Up New Possibilities for “Blue” in Roses New findings on copigmentation presented at IHC2026"
Weren't we the ones who breathlessly await any progress on the Riemann hypothesis? A theorem of pure number theory, with no applications.
Breeders pursued it as a challenge. Doing it via genetic engineering probably feels like cheating to them, but the biochemists do it to learn genetic techniques.
From the picture nobody is going to be putting these in a bouquet any time soon. But the accomplishment is neat. And even if it's not. I'm not gonna yuck their yum.
Suntory sold the GM "Applause" in 2009 as the blue rose too, and it was lavender. Every few years there's another "true blue" headline and it's still mauve-ish. Copigment tricks get you violet, not sky blue.
Comparing the genetic engineering of this rose to curing cancer is about the same as comparing making a sandwich to running an international restaurant chain.
