Unfortunately, the new paper, published 04 April 2025, ‘Phenotypic and genomic signatures across wild Rosa species open new horizons for modern rose breeding’, is not published for open access purposes.
All the more I’m happy to find on Springer Nature / Research Communities a brief summary “behind the paper” of this comprehensive study. It is an interesting piece of literature. Especially the circle representation of phylogenetic relationships of 215 Rosa accessions is very illustrative.
THIS is more the 21st Century we were promised!
Can we pay to see it or is it fully behind closed doors?
I guess you can buy this article. The attached link will help you further.
Very neat. Hope to read it eventually. The paywalling of publicly funded information by corporate middlemen will never not be frustrating.
The phylogram is very pretty, although I wonder if the work provides much novel information relevant to traditional breeding or significantly expands the existing pool of knowledge that could advance our work. Most of the sectional relationships are already rather well established by prior phylogenetic analyses, although they have probably filled in a few gaps with respect to some obscure Chinese species. Without interpretation and bootstrap values, though, the phylogram is of somewhat limited use by itself. Given how complex the inheritance of traits like flower color, fragrance, and disease resistance are, I can’t quite imagine that such a study can be of much practical use, and I’m skeptical of the lofty claims made in the abstract. At the same time, petal count is relatively simple in its inheritance, and probably does not require this sort of study to investigate–so the highlighting of “double flower” seems odd. Also, as always, one can and should always question whether the sampled material was competently authenticated and is independently verifiable.
Stefan
Something that stands out is R. hugonis having a higher “leaves” than the R. roxburghii in the diagram
maybe leaves isn’t “leaflets” (but the minimum seem to line up species wise)
just doesn’t seem right
found a link of what I assume may be the whole thing (or atleast more of it)
download as pdf is disabled so hopefully this doesn’t get blocked
Thank you for finding and sharing that link! Adding to the questions, I don’t quite understand how several different, thoroughly modern rose cultivar series that were derived only in small part from R. persica should come to be spread so far apart in a molecular phylogeny like this. If the results aren’t accurately reflecting the relationships of such roses to one another amid the wild species, then the reported species relationships of other cultivars of hybrid origin (including many of the included teas and Chinas, among others) to one another and to wild species might likewise be suspect. I also wasn’t especially impressed by the specified targets for potential “redomestication” in supplementary tables 19 and 20. Some of those taxa have already made notable if not substantial genetic contributions to various modern roses, and/or have handicaps that would likely result in the elimination of a majority of their genomes by the time their problems have been bred out, just like we’ve seen with Rosa foetida (which is interestingly one of their candidates for potential breeding material). Others, like Rosa multiflora, are already heavily involved in many modern roses. Certain species like Rosa praelucens might seem like interesting novelties to name-drop, but unless further breeding leads to much higher chromosome counts than the typical mix of diploids, triploids, and tetraploids we find in most modern roses, it’s difficult to figure how a dodecaploid species might be made practically useful in breeding new garden roses that perform even remotely like easily-bred cultivars that already exist with many of the traits we’re looking for. Maybe the authors are unaware of such considerations.
It certainly isn’t limited to this study, but at this point in my journey, I find that I can’t agree with the often-repeated premise that all modern roses have a narrow genetic base. That perspective seems to be rooted in a very narrow sampling bias. I think that many of us here, if not most, are aware that many rose breeders have been consciously working with non-mainstream species for a very long time, and that quite a number of such species have already made notable contributions to named cultivars. Supposed experts tarring the entire crop with the same brush suggests at best some level of ignorance about the history of rose breeding.
Stefan
Thank you very much for your detailed responses on this topic which I have read with great interest.
Upon close inspection I can follow you very well on many points. However, it is well known that the review process of Nature articles is of a high standard. Only about 8 % of submitted manuscripts will be accepted.
With this in mind, it would actually be quite intriguing to see how the authors would respond to your critical notes.
