Making bouquets last longer: Japanese scientists slow flower ageing
Japanese scientists say they have found a way to slow down the ageing process in flowers by up to a half, meaning bouquets could remain fresh for much longer.
Japanese scientists say they have found a way to slow down the ageing process in flowers by up to a half, meaning bouquets could remain fresh for much longer.
Researchers at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation in Tsukuba, east of Tokyo, said they had found the gene believed to be responsible for the short shelf-life of flowers in one Japanese variety of morning glory.
Morning glory is the popular name for hundreds of species of flowering plants whose short-lived blooms usually unfold early in the day and are gone by nightfall. By suppressing the gene - named "ephemeral1" - the lifespan of each flower was almost doubled, said Kenichi Shibuya, one of the lead researchers in a study carried out jointly with Kagoshima University.
"Unmodified flowers started withering 13 hours after they opened, but flowers that had been genetically modified stayed open for 24 hours," he said.
"We have concluded that the gene is linked to petal ageing. The finding could lead to developing methods to extend the life of cut flowers."
Shibuya said it would be "unrealistic" to modify genes of all kinds of flowers "but we can look for other ways to suppress the target gene ... such as making cut flowers absorb a solution that prevents the gene from becoming active".
