The main breeding objectives for plants are most often resistance or tolerance to diseases and pests, increased yield and improved quality. As consumers prefer familiar colours in plants important for human consumption, I have focused in this thesis on more recent knowledge on colours in ornamental plants. Interesting flower colours in ornamental plants are of great interest to the consumer and are of great importance in the acquisition of new ornamental plant species. The model organism for the study of flower colour is the petunia. Using petunia, scientists have identified a large number of genes that influence flower colour, including those encoding biosynthetic enzymes, regulators of their expression and vacuole function. Various metabolites such as chlorophyll, anthocyanins, flavonols and carotenoids are responsible for the visible colours of leaves and flowers in plants. Today, new gene-editing techniques provide us with new opportunities to study how genes work and to create new colours. For the world's best-selling cut flowers, the main genetic sequences and in vitro transformation protocols are already available. However, there is still much work to be done by researchers in the field of colour. In my thesis I will focus on the presentation of key colours, the factors influencing colours, their genes in some varieties of ornamental plants and the possibilities of their manipulation.
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