A Perspective of Scented Rose Genetic Resources in Iran

Rose genetics and genomics research has extremely progressed during the recent decades. The genus Rosa has gained considerable attentions from taxonomists and several species have been described. Currently, 15 species and 6 natural hybrids of this genus are documented in Iran s genetics resources of which Rosa damascena Mill., R. moschata Herrm., R. canina Linn., R. foetida Herrm. and R. iberica Stev. are scented. However, only a few species among these scented roses have economic importance for production of rose oil, rose water and the perfume industry. In this paper, we discuss possible exploitations for sustainable improvement of scented roses by breeding techniques such as molecular markers, transcriptome analysis, as well as outlooks for rose genomics and metabolomics studies at Shiraz University.