The creation of new forms of plants is a fascinating subject. In the case of rose, the pleasure is increased manifold by virtue of the nature of the subject. It was India, from where through the port of Calcutta, in the days of East India Company, that the first Chinese roses (later referred to as ‘Roses de Bengale’) found their way more than 200 years ago to Europe and then to North America. Most modern roses are reported to have descended from this material. The other important material, the musk rose of India – Rosa moschata also contributed to evolving the ‘Noisettes’. India is one of the ancestral homes of the rose since a number of wild species have been growing in the Himalayan region from time immemorial, with a small number of them endemic to India. Along with the scores of rose varieties introduced in the country from the western world over a period of time, the wild species provided an excellent base for the rose breeding work in the country. A report in early 1970s ranked India as number five in the world list of countries engaged in rose breeding.
Although garden roses have been popular in India from the time of the Moghuls, there appears to have been no Indian raised varieties of cultivated roses until the beginning of the last century. The earliest record available is of the variety ‘Dr. S. D. Mukherjee’ (1935) bred by B. K. Roy Chaudhury and ‘Ramakrishna Dev’ by B.S. Bhattacharji (1941). The quest for new varieties of this ‘Queen of flowers’ has continued in the country and we have been given the pleasure of enjoying them.
Rose breeding is a fascinating occupation. In India, there have been two distinct phases of rose breeding. Pre Independence, most of the rose breeding work was being done nkdadlani@gmail.com
by nurserymen (like Bhattacharjis), with very little published information on the breeding procedures followed or the parentage of the varieties introduced. Post Independence, the rose breeding continued with the nurserymen, but there were important additions of several amateurs who also took up this fascinating line of work, besides the research institutions.
As mentioned, the rose breeding work was first taken up by the nurserymen in Bihar (not a popular area for rose growing even today). B.K. Roy Chowdhury and A.K. Roy Chowdhury at Mihijam (Santhal Parganas), and B.S. Bhattacharji and his sons (A.M. Bhattacharji & S.M. Bhattacharji) at Deogarh, as also S. Banerjee, laid the foundation for rose breeding work in India. ‘Dr. S.D. Mukherjee’ (1935) developed by B.K. Roy Chowdhury and ‘Ramakrishna Dev’ (1941) by B.S. Bhattacharji, were the first of the Indian bred rose varieties. After that there was a stream of rose varieties evolved by B. S. Bhatcharji and his sons, who between 1941 and 1968 introduced as many as 125 varieties.
Roy Chowdhury (Dr. S.D. Mukherjee, Bagha Jatin, Dr.P. Banerjee, Muzibar) and Bhattacharji (Raja Ram Mohan Roy,Ram Krishna Dev, Heart Throb, Pandit Nehru, Sugandha) from the eastern part of the country in the pre independence era, were followed by several nurserymen in the north, south and western India enriching the rose collections from India. The prominent ones among these include K.S. Gopalaswamiengar Son, Bangalore: (Srinivasa, Agnihotri, Devdasi, Bharani, Nartaki, Blue Delight), Friends Rosery – Lucknow (Kasturi Rangan, City of Lucknow):, Anand Roses –Jaipur: (Golden Rays, Mahak), Doon Valley Roses – Dehradun: (Ajanta, Sahasradhara,Landour, Rangoli) Laveena Roses – Meerut: (Chunmun, Maharaj); TISCO Nursery – Jamshedpur: (Suvarnarekha, Pioneering Pilot), Ichalkaranji – Maharashtra: (Deccan Delight, Double Delight Supreme, Dr. Noshir Wadia). K.S. Gopalaswamiengar Son (also known as K.S.G. Son) headed now by Kasturirangan, has done remarkable service to the Indian rose world by not only breeding new improved varieties, but also introducing the varieties developed by amateurs into commerce. Another service provided by Kasturirangan has been providing access to a wide range of germplasm in the form of new varieties from across the world, which formed the foundation for rose breeding work by most amateurs. Sriram, Kasturirangan’s son has continued the tradition of K.S.G. Son and helps his father in the rose improvement work.
Although the facilities of the amateur rose breeder and his knowledge of the subject may be considerably less than that of the professional, he may luckily discover a combination of varieties that a professional may overlook. Even if he fails, he would have spent many pleasant hours in trying to do so. Working with modern roses having very mixed ancestry, the results are definitely unpredictable. But there is always a certain amount of speculative uncertainty as to what the result will be, which adds interest to the work. The amateur rose breeders in India were drawn to this fascinating work from diverse fields like science, medicine, engineering, administration, etc. with very little or no knowledge about plant breeding. Except Dr. Pal, who was a trained scientist, all other amateurs have relied on their sense of beauty and culture in their work. The result has been tremendous. Many of the roses that beautify our rose gardens are the result of efforts of the amateur breeders whose main compensation has been the pleasure the work has afforded them.
Dr. Pal, who combined his sound scientific knowledge and considerable experience of genetics and plant breeding with an artist’s sensitivity to form and colour, to give us a series of very popular varieties, e.g. Rose Sherbet, Dr. Homi Bhabha, Delhi Princess, Mechak, Kanakangi,Raja Surendra Singh of Nalagarh, Golden Afternoon, Banjaran, Chitchor, Loree and Delhi Pink Pearl. Later, M.S. Viraraghavan, a civil servant who preferred his hobby and pursued it with great vigor and vision and who used complex crosses, involving many parents to create a larger variability to base his selections, starting with ‘First Offering’ gave us some beautiful roses including ‘Priyatama’ (first HT rose in the hand painted series in the world), Mahadev, Kanchi, Vanamali, Priyamvada, Bhagmati and Abhaya 87. These two, adopting highly scientific approach to rose breeding, have ruled the group of amateur rose breeders. The other prominent ones were Raja Surendra Singh of Nalagarh (Yamini Krishnamurthy, Nazr-e-Nazar); S. Banerjee (Chamak, Jyoti); Y. K. Hande (Ajanta Caves, Indian Pearl); M. N. Hardikar (Swami, First Rose Convention, Flying Tata); Braham Datt (K.K. Thakur, Pride of Nagpur, Don Nielson); Arpi Thakur (Ajanta, Sahasradhara, Rangoli); Swami Vinayananda (Swami Shivananda, Bhikkus Som, Sivji, Swami Lokeswarananda); N. V. Shastri (Braham Datt, Double Helix, Govilgarh); S. C. Dey (Sun God, Martin Luther King); Kalyan Chakrabarti (Anusuya,
East West, City of Joy, Birendra Nath); R. S. Jagtap (Sudanshu) Capt. S.C.Dey (Arena series, including Arena 91, Arena 92 and Arena 95) C.R.Chiplunkar (Abasaheb, Dicdella, Dr.Kidwa), B.K.Patil ( ICO Ambassador, ICO Delight), Subrata Ghosh (Lady Grace, Lonely Heart, Maya, Melody Queen), Shekar Dutta ( Touch of Heart). M. S. Viraraghavan (Viru, as he is called by his friends), has added a refreshingly new approach to rose breeding in India, continuously enlarging his rose breeding horizon and candidly sharing his experiences with others. He has sustained his interest in developing roses suitable for the tropics and put rose breeding in India on the global horizon. Breeding roses for the hot climate is not an easy task, as it requires the daunting prospect of consciously reversing the basics of selection underlying western rose breeding over centuries. Further, using species, a major difficulty is that the F1 generation roses are generally triploid and repeat flowering usually is seen in F2 generation and beyond. Also, Rosa clinophylla, being genetically far removed from modern roses, is difficult to work with.
The 1960s brought in an era of scientific rose breeding. The credit for this must go to Dr. B. P. Pal, one of the most eminent and decorated agricultural scientist of the country, who took up rose breeding as a part time activity, besides providing very powerful stimulus to the rose improvement programme at Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), the premier institution for agricultural research in the country, which Dr. Pal headed at the time. The team led by Vishnu Swarup and including R.S. Malik, A.P. Singh and U.S. Kaicker, researched the rose genetics and cytology to gain insight about choice of parents, female and male fertility, inheritances pattern of flower colour, size and fragrance. The approach to rose breeding was more scientific involving genic manipulations, chromosome engineering using aneuploidy and induced mutations through both physical and chemical mutagens. The first set of varieties from this group came in 1968 and since then there has been a stream of very beautiful and floriferous varieties being released by IARI by the team which was expanded to include N.K. Dadlani, B. Singh, H.P. Singh and later K.V. Prasad and D.V. Raju. Some of the more prominent ones include Mrinalini, Raktagandha, Jawahar, Bhim, Dr.B.P. Pal, Priyadarshini, Mother Teresa among HTs and Prema,
Sadabahar, Neelambari, Chandrama, Mohini etc. in the Floribunda group. The varieties developed through mutagenesis included Abhisarika and Pusa Christina.
Besides IARI, the other research institutions engaged in rose breeding include National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), Lucknow, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Bombay, which have done good work on mutagenesis and released a few varieties; as also Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bangalore.
The real skill required to become a successful hybridist comes not in simply applying the pollen of one bloom onto the stigmas of another, but in selecting the proper parents. Many of the amateurs in the early years did not pay much attention to this fact and chose as parents, the varieties that performed well and had their fancy. In a paper published in the Canadian Rose Annual in 1970, Dr. Pal listed varieties recommended by Rose Society of India for conditions similar to Delhi. Among the ten varieties each for exhibition and breeding, only three namely Kiss of Fire, Super Star and Virgo were common. The well known rosarian J.L. Harkness (1969) had recalled a remark by a Scottish farmer interested in cattle breeding that when selecting parents for improving his stock, he followed the maxim: ‘Choose a good bull and a reasonable cow’! A modern rose breeder would need to use all his knowledge and experience in identifying his ‘bull’ and the ‘cow’. Not much is known about the parentage of the roses developed in India in the pre independence period, particularly by the pioneers Bhattacharji and Roy Chowdhury. Careful selection of parents and their choice as either seed or pollen parent, received more attention with the rose breeding work initiated by Dr. Pal at IARI in the 1960s. The IARI rose team did extensive research with the varieties used, testing their pollen fertility and ability to form more hips to decide on their use. Swarup et al. (1973) reported varieties like Buccaneer, Charles Mallerin, Crimson Glory, Golden Splendour, Pink Parfait, Sea Pearl, Sweet Afton, etc. with high female and male fertility to be good parents. Delhi Princess, an extremely vigorous floribunda developed by Dr. Pal was also used extensively at IARI. These varieties featured as parents for many IARI varieties released in the last century. Dr. Pal used Granada, Gruss en Teplitz, Kiss of Fire,Lady X, Orangeade, Sabine, Samourai, Sonia and Virgo among others in his hybridization work. Most of the amateur rose breeders have benefitted from the information on suitability of varieties to be used as parents as reported by IARI / Dr. Pal, to base their hybridization work.
As regards the breeding procedure adopted, most of the earlier rose breeders used seedling selections from raising a large population. Later, with the information available on the suitability of varieties as parents, many of the breeders resorted to hybridization process choosing parents with certain specific characteristics in mind and using the wild species. A few varieties have also been evolved through mutagenesis, particularly at the research institutes, and also a few identified as ‘Sports’ from the popular varieties. Among the ‘sports’, the climbing forms of some popular HTs are common.
Rose breeding objectives in India have been quite undefined. In the present days, the rose breeding programmes could be divided into two main areas: those intended to produce new varieties for the commercially important cut flower trade, and for rose gardens. In India, the second objective has received the attention of most rose breeders. While information on the objectives of earlier rose breeders is not known well, the foreword of the book ‘Rose Growing in the Tropics’ (1959) by B.S. Bhattacharji, mentions that the main objective in his programme was ‘to produce some of the best hybrid roses for warmer parts of the tropics’. The objectives of IARI rose breeding programme were stated to be ‘the production of decorative garden roses for sub tropical and tropical conditions, the incorporation of damask fragrance in recurrent blooming and floriferous varieties, the evolution of attractive long stemmed varieties with long lasting flowers suitable for export, also the production of disease and pest resistant varieties. Most amateurs have attempted to breed roses of attractive form and colour. Their target has been development of varieties with long buds and high centred flowers of classical form, preferably with sweet fragrance. Viraraghavan, in the recent years has sincerely committed himself to breeding roses for the tropical conditions, using wild Rosa species, particularly Rosa clinophylla (R. involucrata) and R. gigantea. His Ganges Mist, Silver Dawn and Ganges Nymph are from R.clinophylla and Manipur Magic, Sir George Watt, Golden Threshold and Allegory of Spring are some of his gigantea hybrids. The breeders across the country have not so far succeeded in getting roses for cut flower trade and with significant resistance to major diseases and pests. These two objectives need to be pursued with greater vigour by the research institutions with better resources in terms of manpower and finances.
The first impulse on holding a rose blooms in your hand is to smell it. It was the fragrance of the rose that endeared it to the ancients. Many of the Indian roses have also been developed keeping in mind this important attribute. Sugandha from Bhattacharji; Rose Sherbet and Scented Bowl and later Kanakangi and Golden Afternoon from Dr. Pal; Jawahar, Anurag from IARI; and several from the amateurs, e.g. Devadasi (Kasturi Rangan); Double Helix (N.V. Shastri); Perfumer (Y.K. Hande); Mahak (P.L. Airun); Swami (M.N. Hardikar); Pride of Nagpur (Braham Datt), among others.
In the absence of any protection for intellectual property rights in the country till recently, the main pleasure which the rose breeders derived from their efforts, was to give a name of their choice to their selections. While a name like Banjaran was appropriate for a rose with colourful petals like the dress of a gypsy woman or Bhim named after the Indian mythological figure with great strength was suitable for a rose with heavy petallage, and Sugandha properly defined the fragrant rose, or the First Offering – the first rose from Viraraghavan, many names were assigned to honour and pay homage to scientists and leaders who have contributed to development of the nation or the rose, social or cultural world. We have roses named after Dr. Homi Bhabha, Sir C.V. Raman, Dr. B.P. Pal, Dr. M.S. Randhawa, Sir M. Viswesarya, Jawahar (Lal Nehru); (Indira) Priyadarshini; Mother Teresa,; Zakir Husain, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Flying Tata; Sailoz Mukherjea; Kamladevi Chattopadhyay;Yamini Krishnamurthy; and even fellow rosarians like Raja Surendra Singh of Nalagarh; Kasturi Rangan or Braham Datt; or rivers like Hemavathy, Netravathy, Vamsadhara, Tamarabharani or just to honour people whom the breeder admired.
In spite of more than a thousand rose varieties having been bred in our country, one does not come across many Indian roses in the rose catalogues in the country or outside. Many amateur rose breeders, in view of the limited resources available, multiply only a few plants, which they share with their loved ones or other rosarians. Most rose nurseries still stock old favourites among the exotic collections. As the Indian varieties are rarely exhibited in the rose shows, not many rose lovers are even aware of the wealth available. This leads to low demand and most nurseries not multiplying them. In the absence of trial grounds in the country, Indian roses do not get tested for their suitability for growing in other climates in the country or outside. Kasturirangan needs to be thanked for introducing the rose varieties bred in India by amateurs through his nursery K.S.G. Son. Lack of IPR protection till recently, also discouraged many rose breeders from putting their varieties in the commercial domain. However, this doesn’t mean that Indian rose varieties have not received international recognition. ‘Banjaran’ won prizes at rose shows in USA, ‘Bharani’ – introduced in UK in 1980s received much attention. ‘Mohini’, with its unusual chocolate brown colour attracted the attention of the leading American rose nursery Jackson & Perkins, who wanted to patent it.
The roses, which have been added to the large collection earlier available through the efforts of these Indian breeders, are a true testimony to the love and appreciation for this flower among the rosarians in the country. Most of the varieties bred perform well under the country’s varied climatic conditions.
In spite of the progress made in rose breeding the world over, there is unlimited field for the improvement of garden roses. Even the most ardent rosarian will admit this fact, for no known rose is perfect, none has all the qualities we desire. We have yet to obtain a rose that is a heavy and continuous producer of well formed, fragrant blooms of rich colour, has good growth habit, is disease resistant and is dependably hardy to perform well in climatic zones of the country. So the quest goes on for a better one even today.
