Rose Genomics: Challenges and Perspectives

Cultivated roses have a very ancient history. Artificial crossing led to what is today perceived as modern rose cultivars. Impressively, these modern rose cultivars were established from less than 10 species, which have contributed to the origin of the about 35,000 existing rose cultivars. Roses exhibit an extraordinary diversity of traits, both of economic and scientific importance. Several recent studies have been marked as important milestones on the journey towards deeply understanding the molecular and genetic mechanisms that govern these traits, yet we still lack information on the genome sequences of rose species and cultivars, especially those that heavily participated to rose domestication and breeding programs.