11/3/2008

As I have said before, Purple is Blue!
Damn. Every year Suntory drags out these same old plastic purple roses and calls them “blue.”

World’s First Blue Roses On Display in Japan
November 1, 2008 – | Cleveland Leader
…So how were they created? Japanese Suntory worked with the Australian company Florigene, who took the delphinidin gene (which creates the blue color) from a petunia. They took that gene and inserted it into a mauve roses… then used RNAi technology to reduce the cyandin pigment, which eventually resulted in the final blue roses which was unveiled today at the annual Flower Expo in Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.

These might be best described as the world’s first “legal” blue roses’ since the roses have been displayed at the annual Flower Expo in Japan since 2000 but only this month have the Suntory Blue Roses been approved Japan’s “Bio-Diversity Law” and new blue roses will be put on sale in 2009.