No, the trial was only conducted for three years, presumably because that's how long they budgeted. I don't think they actually stopped producing blue flowers at that point.

Violets are not red / roses are not blue / you can call them purple / if you have a clue

It's proof of concept for biotech applicability.

More details on this page.

https://www.suntory.com/sic/story/bluerose/1/

Imagine making beer where fermentation creates alcohol and some other psychoactive substance.

There is a color photo, but the rose isn't actually blue.

It's obviously white and gold.

Bad translation, see the other top-level comment with the origin link that referes to them as violet-blue.

purple isn't real, there is only more blue.

Immediately what I thought of

I would've called it "a sickly kind of purple"

Not everyone has the skill set to cure cancer.

1,000 labs spending $1M each to cure cancer would likely not progress as far as 10 labs spending $100M each.

Perfecting the techniques around genetic manipulation will likely indirectly help cure cancer.

Doing so on something that has public appeal (and little to no opposition) is less risky than doing it on an animal cell line.

Weren't we the ones who breathlessly await any progress on the Riemann hypothesis? A theorem of pure number theory, with no applications.

Breeders pursued it as a challenge. Doing it via genetic engineering probably feels like cheating to them, but the biochemists do it to learn genetic techniques.

From the picture nobody is going to be putting these in a bouquet any time soon. But the accomplishment is neat. And even if it's not. I'm not gonna yuck their yum.