The challenge to create even bluer roses continues

Blue roses were commercialized, but the Suntory’s challenge to the impossible is not over yet. In the natural world, there are many flowers that are pure blue. These flowers are able to not only synthesize blue pigments but also produce pure blue by combining blue pigments with metal ions, such as aluminum, and various co-existing compounds with the blue pigments, including flavones. It is also known that the higher the pH in the cellular vacuoles in which blue pigments accumulated, the more pure blue the color is.

If such mechanisms to produce blue flowers are reproduced in roses, roses in more of a pure blue than the current APPLAUSE should be developed. Suntory’s challenge to produce “pure blue roses” continues today.

The “challenge to the impossible” is not over yet (Senior General Manager Yoshikazu Tanaka Ph.D.)

Interviews and requests for lectures still continue

After the public announcement of our success, we obtained the permit from the government and established a production system. Finally, after five years, we put roses on sale. Even now, several years after their release, I still receive requests for interviews and lectures. I have been pleased with these requests, but I have been thinking, “Rather than dwelling on the past. I should think about the future direction.”

Since the release, I have received many responses from consumers. Some say that “the color is unprecedented blue,” but others say that “it is not blue but purple.” Some asked us to “create roses of pure blue.”

Sometimes I receive compliments about fragrance of the blue rose, but the pathway to produce colors is quite different from the pathway of biosynthesis of fragrant compounds. Because the genetic modification only changed colors, and fragrance and shapes are the same as those of original roses, I have slightly mixed feelings when I receive compliments about fragrance.

Conducting research is “going where no one has gone before”

Elementary and junior high school students wrote me letters. It is a pleasure for me as a researcher if blue roses make them interested in science. From the days when I was an elementary school student, I myself liked not only plants but also living creatures in general, and often looked at animal encyclopedia. I was moved when I noticed that bacteriophage and a lunar lander looked similar.

People often say to me, “It must be hard to conduct research that nobody else has ever done, groping your way forward,” but in principle, research is to do something that no one has done.

We can open up a new way if I try to apply new ideas and knowledge we learned from other studies and do whatever possible, believing that there is “no reason not to be able to succeed.”

Warm responses from consumers encourage me most (Principal Researcher Yukihisa Katsumoto, Ph.D.)

Moved to tears to see an embroidery of blue roses

The moments when I was most pleased to engage in this project were not when we obtained good experimental results but when we received warm encouraging responses from general consumers after the announcement of the success in the development of blue roses.

A woman in her 80s sent us a handmade embroidery with a motif of blue roses, along with a letter, saying, “I am glad to have lived long to see the roses.” I am moved to tears to think of her, putting in one stitch after another for someone that she didn’t know.

People who are not interested in flowers may not care whether roses are blue or red. Nevertheless, there were a tremendous number of people who called the birth of blue roses “realization of hope” and “dreams come true.” I was glad to have continued this work from the bottom of my heart.

Researchers want interaction with consumers

The members of the laboratory always ask themselves how the products they are creating will be received by consumers and how much value they have. In daily life, researchers do not interact with consumers. We work in the farthest place from consumers. Nevertheless, many consumers send us responses, which give the ultimate pleasure for us who make a living as researchers.

One of the reasons why we received so many responses is perhaps the fact that it took a long time to succeed. APPLAUSE was created after many struggles, and each consumer was waiting for it. Thus, many consumers shared our feeling that blue roses were special. I would like to do my best to brighten up the blue color in order to meet their expectation.

Aiming at the blue color of Union Jack

The best way to brighten up the blue color is to learn from the nature. We should not only change rose varieties but also examine what mechanisms of other blue flowers make them really blue, and imitate them with roses. For this purpose, procedures more complicated than the procedures of creating APPLAUSE will be necessary.

I have heard about a story about the initiation of the blue rose project; one of the reasons for its initiation was that then-President Keizo Saji wanted to return a favor to the people in Scotland who helped whisky production. Creation of the blue color of Union Jack would be a true repayment of the favor. Thus, my ultimate goal is that dark blue color.

Hope to sell APPLAUSE to overseas consumers (Researcher Noriko Nakamura Ph.D.)

From Japan to the world–Challenges for blue roses extend

Currently, APPLAUSE is put on sale only in Japan in the world.

However, because the news on the success in the development of the first blue roses in the world were reported widely in foreign countries, many people wish to have a look at APPLAUSE. For those people, I hope that APPLAUSE will be released overseas as soon as possible.

As in Japan, we have to overcome many hurdles to release it overseas. Someday, to fulfill Suntory’s dream to return a favor to Scotland, blue roses will hopefully be delivered to that land across the ocean.

• Research papers on flower
• Conference presentations on flower