| Wednesday What's New: Genetically Enhancing the Scent of Flowers |
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| Written by Heleigh Bostwick Wednesday, 10 August 2011 | |||
 Here’s a new piece of research for you to ponder. As we all know some flowers are more fragrant than others whether it’s the scent of a rose, jasmine, or gardenia, or the stink of the titan arum flower. And some flowers really don’t have much scent at all. Now, Israeli scientists say they have discovered a way to genetically enhance a flower’s scent or to give one where none is present. The scent that flowers have has a specific purpose, and that is to attract pollinators, which are critical in a plant’s fruit production. Interestingly, the intensity of a flower’s is influenced by the time of day, weather, age of the flower, and of course the species. Many hybridized species have had the scent literally bred out of them. The difference between the fragrance given off by a native rose and some of the roses from the florist is remarkable. I enjoy the multitude of fragrances that flowers perfume the air so what makes this research so valuable to me is that it may be a way to counteract the demise of scent in flowers due to air pollutants. Read more about this here. |
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