Quest for a blue carnation

ROSES are red but carnations could one day be blue — that is if scientists manage to control the hue of one of the world's oldest-known cultivated flowers. Armed with a three-year, $100,000 grant from the Australian Research Council, La Trobe University plant biologist Tony Gendall hopes to crack the Holy Grail of floral engineering and produce blue carnations. Read more:

Anthocyanin chromophores and the quest for the blue rose

What makes a purple pigment blue? The answer could lead to the elusive blue rose says Kumi Yoshida of Nagoya University, Japan Anthocyanins are to be thanked for beautiful flower colours. These sugar-containing flavonoids differ from other plant pigments - such as green chlorophylls, yellow and orange carotenoids and purple betalains - by exhibiting a wider variety of colours. When anthocyanins are found in petals, dissolved in the petal cells' vacuoles (large sacs that make up over 90 per cent of the cells' volume), they are responsible for an assortment of reds, purples and blues Read more:
Anthocyanin chromophores and the quest for the blue rose Source: rsc.org

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