Unfortunately for gardeners, modern plant breeding has caused many of the most popular flowers to lose much of the scent of their ancestors. As plants have been bred to maximize color, shape, and other characteristics, such as long-lasting blooms after cutting, the scents have mysteriously disappeared. Almost three-fourths of all crops depend on insect pollinators attracted by floral scents. Honey bees alone are responsible for pollinating one third of U.S. crops. Boosting floral scents would not only make flower beds more aesthetically pleasing, it would also improve the yield and quality of many crops.
Plants use floral scents to attract pollinators or to repel harmful insects.
Floral scents begin as oils that are produced by the petals in most plants. Because these oils evaporate easily in warm weather, scientists call them volatile compounds. The aroma of a flower may contain as few as seven to ten different oils, as in snapdragon or petunia, or as many as 100 different chemicals, as is the case with orchids. Dudareva has been studying floral scents in snapdragon, which she selected because it is one of the few modern plants that have a strong floral scent. Most scientific work has been done on a Californian plant called Clarkia breweri, but I was wanting to use another plant model to know if similar mechanisms were found in other plant species.