The Heritage Rose Collection at Florida Southern College

The heat-therapy program at Florida Southern College (FSC) was started in 1983 with the objective to rid roses of the viruses causing rose mosaic disease. That program continues, and FSC now has a collection of over 300 rose varieties, mostly "heritage" or "antique" types. FSC is not an NCPN-funded center, and efforts have been made to avoid overlap with the foundation rose collection at the University of California at Davis, which emphasizes more popular modern hybrids. The FSC collection is used for teaching plant taxonomy, genetics, and horticulture. The collection is maintained in two landscaped gardens, as well as in a range of greenhouses, on the campus in Lakeland, Florida.

The FSC program has used indexing and testing services at UC Davis and Washington State University for rose mosaic. For the last several years, they have also worked with Dr. Kevin Ong, at Texas A&M University, to test the collection for several minor viruses of roses using PCR techniques. Florida Southern is a private college, with no official mandate to provide propagation material to the nursery industry, but they do it for the love of the roses. Virus-tested rose propagation material has been distributed to at least 22 nurseries in the U.S., as well as to Bermuda, Britain, South Africa, Canada, and Brazil. The older varieties in the FSC Heritage Rose Collection are an important source of genetic material for future rose breeding efforts.