Objective
Market research carried out by Florigene has shown that there is ademand for blue flowers which are available year-round. Currently, most blue flowers are only availabl in the summer. In most flowers no blue flower pigments are present e.g. carnation and rose. Introduction these pigments did not result in a blue flower. Preliminary results showed that vacuolar pH is the limiting factor for producing blue flowers. The aim of this project is to isolate genes through activator tagging and transposon tagging, that are involved in vacuolar pH. Gene function and gene expression will be tested by introducing the gene using sense and antisense approaches into several crops e.g. rose, carnation and pelargonium. New skills will be developed to be able to measure vacuolar pH. Generally pH measurements of flowers from different species have been determined using rude methods. This project will produce new accurate pH measurement methods. The ability to modify vacuolar pH will provide the possibility to study the effect of pH on metabolic activity as well as use this for modification of taste in fruits and vegetables.
The ultimate aim of this project to manupulate vacuolar pH and modify flower colour. The production of novel flower colours can give the flower industry in Europe a new impulse and create new jobs. This is very important specially since many jobs in the flower industry have lost to African and South American countries such as Columbia and Kenya.
The unique combination of fundamental research done by universities and institutes/hat will be tanslated by the 2 companies of the project will ensure that the skills and knowledge that will be developed in this project will give the European economy a competitive advantage.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturefruit growing
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturevegetable growing
You need to log in or register to use this function
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
2231 NA Rijnsburg
Netherlands