BREEDERS CHASE THE PERFECT ROSE : SOMIS GREENHOUSE CREATES NEW VARIETIES.

Byline: Teresa Jimenez Daily News Staff Writer

The roses you're looking forward to receiving - or feeling the squeeze to buy - on Valentine's Day will perhaps look stunningly red or vibrant yellow, last a week before wilting and give off a fragrance that will fill the room.

Just as nature intended . . . sort of.

Though Mother Nature had the original idea for the all-time favorite flower, it's received plenty of help over the years from ``mad scientists'' of the flower world, who have tinkered with everything from color and scent to disease resistance and stem length.

And they're still trying to make them better.

Every year, Keith Zary mixes and matches about 300 rose plants at the Bear Creek Gardens nursery in Somis until he has about 400,000 offspring.

With luck, one of those seedlings will become the magic rose - another addition to the list of prize flowers produced by Jackson & Perkins, the largest producer of rose plants for home gardens and wholesale growers based in Medford, Ore.

``We're trying to improve the shape, the fragrance, the blooms, give them longer vase life so the consumer has a better quality rose,'' said Zary, who has a doctorate in genetics.

They're meant to be enjoyed, but they're also big business, and Zary faces fierce competition to create a rose that will mean money for growers who sell to florists.

About 1.2 billion rose stems are sold in the United States every year, and 98.4 million will be sold for Valentine's Day alone.

And that doesn't include the garden plants that the 23 million hobby rose gardeners buy every year.

The roses a loved one buys on Valentine's Day is often the result of an international competition, with development that takes at least five years before it reaches the corner florist. Ten years ago, you may have bought a red rose named Samantha. Today, Classy has taken over.

What does Classy have over Samantha? While Samantha has longer stems and bigger blooms, a single plant doesn't produce as many flowers as Classy. And Samantha doesn't like the heat in South America, where about 70 percent of cut roses are grown. Classy does just fine there.

But Classy didn't become a wonder producer with a liking for countries where labor is cheap all by itself.

``Jackson & Perkins will show growers seedlings, ask growers what they think. They want to test the market. That's what the business is all about,'' said Jim Krone, executive vice president of Roses Inc., a non-profit association for cut rose growers. ``The odds are not very good of finding the new magic rose, but they keep trying.''

Zary said it's a time-tested process.

``Three years ago, we produced Tango,'' Zary said. ``As soon as we saw it, we knew it would do well. It's very novel.''

The orange rose with a cream reverse on the petals and Saturn, a yellow-orange blend, are a couple of the hybrid discoveries made by the Somis nursery. A committee in Medford has the honor of naming the plants.

Back to the 400,000 offspring. Every year in March, Zary and his team collect pollen from a group of plants, placing the powdery pods in a can and brush it onto the pistons of another set of plants. Within a few weeks, they have seeds, and those seeds become small rose plants, babied in 8,500 square feet of greenhouse at the nursery.

As the plants begin budding, they start assessing: Is the flower fragrant? Does it produce a lot of buds? Does it grow quickly? Does it resist disease? And most important: Is it pretty?

They will keep only 2,000 for observation, then 100 and then only four or five.

``You've got to believe we've lost some good varieties, but you try not to think about that,'' Zary said, looking at the garbage cans full of rejected seedlings.

The lucky plants will be seeded and sent to growers in Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador for testing. If they pass, they're produced and sold to growers who will, in turn, sell to a florist.

Next year, they'll start again with a few new parents in the mix, preferably a newer hybrid that will lead to even better offspring, Zary said.

And each year, they come one step closer to the perfect rose.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Ran in Conejo only--color) A rose blooms at the nursery, which is one of the largest producers of roses for sale in the United States. Breeders say they work to create the ``magic'' rose that will catch the public's fancy.

(2--Ran in Conejo and Simi--color in Conejo only) Keith Zary clips seedlings in the greenhouse at Bear Creek Gardens, a development nursery in Somis.

Tina Gerson/Daily News