In December 1999, Professor Chia Tet Fatt from Singapore’s National Institute of Education’s National Science Academic Group succeeded in producing the world’s first successful bioluminescent flowers, using a white-petalled strain of Dendrobium orchid known as the Dendrobium White Fairy #5. Utilising particle bombardment, he transferred biologically active DNA containing the luciferase gene from fireflies into the orchid tissues, and then propagated them, eventually yielding stable, transgenic orchids retaining the firefly gene. These bioluminescent orchids emit a greenish-white light not just from the petals but also from the roots, stem, and leaves, which is a constant light visible to the human eye, lasting up to 5 hours at a time, and ranging in intensity from 5000 to 30,000 photons per second, depending upon which region of the plant is emitting it.