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Monsanto is working on anti-aging technology for flowers using a genetic technology it can feed to plants through vase water.
The St. Louis biotech company. . .disclosed in a patent application that it’s testing a new way of stopping roses, carnations, and petunias from wilting.
That could help get flowers to supermarkets, florists, and mortuaries just as they’re ready to bloom. Attempts to do that now are the bane of the fresh-cut-flower industry, which relies on airplanes, tanks of anti-aging gas, and toxic chemicals to do it.
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. . .the new approach involves temporarily modifying the function of specific plant genes by spritzing them with genetic molecules called RNA, or feeding the molecules to their roots.
. . . Monsanto scientists Jill Deikman and Nicholas Wagner attempted to use RNA to interfere with the ability of cut flowers to make ethylene, an odorless gas known to plant scientists as “the aging hormone.”
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. . . . A spokesperson for Monsanto said the flower effort represents “early discovery work” by teams that have tried to identify new applications of RNA in agriculture.
Read full, original post: Monsanto Cultivates a Rose That Doesn’t Wilt
