The blue rose business is finally blossoming in Japan, five years after the first genetically-engineered buds were unveiled.Suntory Flowers turned the old saying that roses are red and violets are blue on its head in June 2004 when it unveiled its latest creation but then had to spend the next five years getting government approval to sell the genetically engineered flowers. But their 20 year effort in developing this flower seems to have been worth it. Since they began its sale on November 3, the first 6,000 batch of roses they've produced for 2009 have been sold out, even though they cost 3,000 yen (33 U.S. dollars) for a single stem or nearly 10 times that of a normal rose. Suntory's blue roses were the highlight of the International Flower Expo on Wednesday (November 11), though not everyone was rushing out to buy them.The blue roses named 'Applause' have a more distinct fragrance than the average roses according to visitors. While the blue-ish tint to the petal may not seem all that blue to everyone, the manufacturers say it is indeed a world first genetically-blue pigment in roses. Roses don't naturally originally have a blue pigment to them. So we used genetic engineering to take the blue pigment of a pansy and put that into a rose to make these blue roses. Executive General Manager for Suntory Flowers, Yasunori Yomo explained to Reuters. While other roses with exotic colors have hit the market before, most have been dyed flowers using artificial colouring. Suntory is preparing for it's success already. By 2010, they hope to be selling at least 50,000 roses and quadruple that number by 2011. Roses make up about 10% of the nearly 4 billion US dollar Japanese cut flower market, and Suntory hopes to use this new rose to make its market share truly blossom.
