SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Petunias have long been a favorite for gardens and hanging baskets due to their bountiful blooms and vibrant colors. But thanks to biotechnology, a new variety really shines — literally glows.

The bioluminescent Firefly Petunia puts out a steady, soft glow much like moonlight. It debuted this spring to overwhelming enthusiasm and earned its place on the cover of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions in 2024.

“People look at this glowing plant and they see something bigger than just a pretty plant; it means something to them and it’s really getting a lot of attention,” said Keith Wood, a molecular scientist and CEO of Light Bio, which developed the plant.

“All parts of the plant produce bioluminescence, but the brightest part of the plant are the flower buds. And that’s why we call it the Firefly Petunia because it looks a little bit like fireflies sitting on top the petunia,” he said.

When the seeds are put onto a bed of soil and they start to germinate, it looks like a bed of stars, he said.

“Almost everyone who sees this plant thinks of Avatar because of all the glowing plants in the movie, he said.

Wood and colleagues Karen Sarkisyan, a synthetic biologist, and Ilia Yampolsky, a biomolecular chemist, founded Light Bio in 2019.

The technology for the glow-in-the-dark petunia uses a bioluminescence discovered in glowing mushrooms. Genes from the mushroom are introduced into the petunia to make it luminescent.

The company developed thousands of prototypes to optimize the configuration of the genes for efficient light production and did some crossbreeding to get the best commercial traits in the plants.

“It was a combination of molecular technology and traditional breeding,” he said.

The idea started with Wood’s work as a Ph.D. student at the University of California-San Diego in the 1980s. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the revolution in genetic engineering was just getting started.

He was specifically looking into the ability to design novel proteins to test new technologies and thought the protein that makes fireflies glow would be perfect. But his colleagues were hesitant.

“What I had to do is convince them to move from their traditional research in biochemistry into these new technologies of molecular genetics,” he said.

But things started happening, and the team discovered the enzyme luciferase, which produces bioluminescence. It was far more useful than he had imagined.

It was especially useful for learning how genes work inside living organisms. One of the things the team did with this new gene was to clone it into a tobacco plant. That was the first glowing plant, and it got a lot of publicity, he said.

“So this idea of making glowing plants, something to do just for people in their homes really started with that plant we made way back then,” he said.

Other companies have tried to develop bioluminescent plants commercially, but he didn’t get involved because he knew they didn’t have the right technology to make it work.

“It wasn’t really until some colleagues of mine discovered this new kind of bioluminescence in glowing mushrooms that we saw a way to solve this problem, and that’s what led to Light Bio and what we’re doing today,” he said.

Wood has worked in biotechnology, specializing in luminescence, for about 30 years, and spent most of his career with biotechnology company Promega in Madison, Wis. Through a program he initiated as head of research, Promega became the leading supplier of bioluminescence technology for research purposes — mostly pharmaceutical, biotechnology and university research.

But he saw great opportunity in Light Bio and resigned from Promega in 2019 to head up the company. His cofounder colleagues, who discovered and developed the technology for bioluminescent plants, maintained their research positions.

USDA’s regulatory approval took almost two years, and Light Bio went to commercial production in late 2023.

Ramping up

After securing USDA approval in the fall of 2023, Wood went to Susie Raker, vice president of Raker-Roberta’s Young Plants in Litchfield, Mich., and asked what they could do to get the Firefly to market.

The company is one of the largest young plant producers in the U.S. It supplies plant plugs to greenhouses across the country, where they are further grown for retail.

“Obviously with the lateness of what he was trying to do, it caused some hurdles we had to get through. But we managed to pull it off, no problem, and we distributed over 120,000 plants to consumers in the U.S., all through small package shipping,” she said.

“We had some problems shipping in the mail, that happens, but nothing we hadn’t experienced in the past. But overall the feedback has been … a resounding yes from consumers. They love this product just as much as we do,” she said.

The goal for 2025 is to ship between 600,000 and a million Firefly Petunias through multiple different channels — direct to consumer and the more traditional supply chain.

The demand is there. It’s a very unique product, one of a kind and so groundbreaking people want it. It loves to flower regardless of how much light it gets, she said.

“I’ve been selling plants my entire life, and I have seen a lot of different things, and nothing has blown my mind quite like Firefly … it is truly a magical product,” she said.

“I am so mesmerized by it … and I’ve been looking at it for over a year. I will tell you it is much more mesmerizing the more plants that you have, but one plant does put on a show for sure,” she said.

The plants were propagated through cuttings in 2023. Plants for the upcoming season were started in a laboratory from tissue culture and grown from there to create mother stock for cuttings.

The plants will be available this year through 200 to 300 independent garden centers – not big box retailers — across the nation and online.

“This plant is truly unique, and for plant lovers or not it’s such a scientific breakthrough. It’s super exciting. I’m super excited to be a part of it. I’m very thankful … to Keith and his team at Light Bio for giving me the opportunity to work with them on it,” she said.

And the Firefly is just the start. The goal is to get bioluminescence into chrysanthemums, houseplants and cut flowers, she said.

“The opportunities are endless, it’s like real-life Avatar stuff,” she said.

Festive unveiling

The Firefly was the star of the show at the “Illuminate the Night” event in late May at Moss Greenhouses, the only physical location selling the plant in 2024.

The nursery, just north of Twin Falls, Idaho, made a festival of the much-anticipated unveiling event. There was a live band, fire spinning dancers, axe throwing, food trucks and a full bar.

“We had a big party to say the least,” said Jennifer Moss, CEO of family-owned Moss Greenhouses.

About 1,000 to 2,000 people showed up for the evening event. Despite onsite parking for 500 vehicles, cars were parked on both sides of the road for three-quarters of a mile. The line to buy the Firefly Petunia was 150 to 200 people deep for four solid hours.

“We sold over $50,000 of these things after 6 p.m. that day. It was crazy. People showed up, they wanted them,” she said.

And there was no hesitation even though folks hadn’t seen the plant glow and they cost $30 apiece.

“We thought we were going to sell out. We were very, very nervous towards the last hour of the event,” she said.

“This is something new that the world has never seen. And the fact that the breeder made the Best Inventions of 2024 list for TIME Magazine in the age of AI is just like mind boggling,” she said.

This technology gives people the opportunity to bring magic into their own spaces, she said.

“That’s huge. It’s mystical, it’s technology, but it’s natural. It’s a very exciting concept and has lots of potential,” she said.

“As the genetics improve, I’m really excited to see where they’re going to go with it. It is definitely a generation one plant,” she said.

The Firefly is incredibly cold-tolerant but not heat-tolerant. It grows extremely well in cooler temperatures, and the glow is so much brighter if it is treated with extra love and care and is on a regular fertilizer regiment, she said.

It has the potential to be an outstanding option for event venues, such as evening weddings. It’s also a huge opportunity for the horticulture industry, she said.

“Most plants are bought through a box store these days. So anything that the independent garden center can do to really bring attention to their location and also stage themselves as kind of a versatile event venue that’ll bring more foot traffic to them and potentially more customers is a huge opportunity,” she said

“There’s so much more to happen with this Firefly. I’m just extremely grateful that Moss was even considered to be involved,” she said.

Motivation

The amount of excitement around the Firefly Petunia has been extraordinary, and the event at Moss Greenhouses showed just how really excited the public is about this, Wood said.

After creating technologies using bioluminescence for research purposes — which is beneficial and brings excitement to people with technical backgrounds — he wanted to do something with the remarkable, natural phenomena to bring value and excitement to the general public.

The field of biotechnology is motivated by trying to solve practical problems, big problems that need big solutions, and that’s important, he said.

“But the world tends to think of science as kind of a formal, technical and ultimately a very practical area of endeavor. We wanted to show that science can do more than that, that science could also bring beauty into our lives, can bring enjoyment,” he said.

“That’s something that has not normally been associated with biotechnology. We don’t think of these kinds of technology as having the purpose of bringing enjoyment, and that’s what Light Bio does,” he said.

The basic motivation for the company is to move from the very practical and technical motivations of biotechnology into something that can bring joy and beauty into the lives of just average people.

It’s also meaningful because it brings an experience to people’s lives about what genetic engineering is and does, he said.

“People know about genetic engineering, they read about it, but almost nobody has any real experience with it. They don’t actually see it, touch it, feel it, it’s all very abstract to them,” he said

People love and enjoy what Light Bio has done with this glowing plant, and they get a chance to experience what genetic engineering can actually do for them, he said.

“So we think the company is doing something quite remarkable and quite significant that goes beyond just a pretty plant,” he said.