But then again, we've been busy. The month of May is ... well ... really busy.
During the next few weeks, we will be updating the blog with what we've been doing.
Research plots are being developed, and we've been planting the fields.
Interns and seasonal help are onsite and productive.
And very good things are happening in the breeding greenhouses.
Mike Uchneat is G2's General Manager, and one of the two people with an ownership interest in G2.
Mike grew up in Sunderland, MA, just north of Amherst in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. As a young man, Mike worked on the family farm growing everything from corn and cole crops to strawberries and strawflowers. Along with the vegetables, Mike's family had a small greenhouse operation focusing on spring annuals.
When it came time for college, Mike came to central PA as an engineering student at Penn State, but soon returned to his roots in horticulture. He graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in horticulture in 1990, and then immediately went to work with Dr. Todd Wehner at NC State, working on disease resistance in cucumbers for his M.S.
Mike returned to Penn State in 1993 to pursue his PhD with Dr. Richard (Dick) Craig on botrytis resistance in Pelargonium. It was at Penn State that Mike met Rick Grazzini, his business partner in G2.
After graduation, Mike was hired by Pan American Seeds (a Ball Horticulture division) as a plant breeder. Mike worked on both seed- and vegetatively-propagated flowers during his tenure with Ball. Mike was deeply involved in the Wave petunia project, and won multiple internal awards for his contributions to the Easy Wave petunia series. Mike bred the Solstice and Snapshot snapdragon series and was involved in the commercialization of Dragon Wing begonia. Products developed by Mike include many of the Fiesta double impatiens (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=in%2Fuchneat%0D%0A&d=PTXT ).
In addition to being an active breeder, Mike was Station Manager for the Elburn, IL research facility and was responsible for mentoring many of the newly hired plant breeders and breeding technicians that worked at Elburn.
Mike and Rick's grad school daydreams of "starting a breeding company someday" became a possibility in 2006 when Rick sold his former contract research business. GardenGenetics became a reality in January, 2007.
In addition to being GM of G2, Mike maintains active breeding programs, both contract and proprietary, in more than 20 species. His broad and deep experience as a professional breeder within the ornamental plant industry prove to be valuable on a daily basis.
If you work with G2, you will realize rather quickly that we are fairly wide open. We have opinions, and we'll let you know them. We mean no offense. You are hiring us to work on your projects with you. We feel that we owe you our best effort, and that includes ... letting you know what we think.
As we attempt to develop a sustainable research greenhouse, we obviously have to make compromises, especially where pest/pathogen control and nutrient requirements are concerned. But the process --- how we make our decisions --- is always with sustainability in mind. Yes, we temper that vision with a farmer's pragmatism. But we all know the vision, and diligently pursue it.
For instance, the air entering G2's 20,000 SF greenhouse passes through a fine screen designed to exclude pests as small as western flower thrips. This design feature minimizes the impact of seasonal insect pests within the greenhouses. However if you have ever worked within an insect-screened greenhouse, even screens are not perfect.
Furthermore, we frequently bring in plants from the outside (either by purchase or selections from our breeding programs). No matter how thoroughly we sanitize these specimens, we invariably bring in small populations of pests, either on the plant material or in the media. Yes, we re-pot. Yes, we attempt to sanitize cuttings. No, this is not a perfect solution, either.
We do not attempt to maintain a sterile facility, only a reasonably clean one. And again, since we are working from a clean slate, visitors to G2's research greenhouses are invariably impressed with the levels of cleanliness.
G2's greenhouses are also heated through the floor. Warm floors generally mean dry floors, and dry floors tend to stay cleaner, longer.
Our greenhouse water (a topic on which there will be multiple posts) is sanitized by the addition of small amounts of a chlorine-containing acid (hypochlorous acid --- brand name H2Oxide). Think of H2Oxide as a type of chlorine bleach, in a low-level formulation which is not phytotoxic to plants. In our experience, it works effectively. We still occasionally have minor algae and biofilm accumulations, but these are controllable. Is H2Oxide an organic-certified treatment? No. We choose to use it because we concluded that it is the solution with the least environmental impact and the best performance. If we can minimize the growth of biofilms and algae on the floors, and in the cooling systems, we can minimize the need to use more aggressive insecticides for pests like shore flies and fungus gnats.
Sustainable is not simple in a research greenhouse. We are proud of our efforts. We will continue to get better. We will continue to share our efforts with you.
G2 is in the luxurious position --- perhaps even the enviable position --- of working from a blank slate. As we develop our research farm and greenhouse facility, we are able to look to the future, and plan to continuously develop and improve our sustainability programs.
Over the next few weeks, we intend to describe in this blog what G2 is attempting to do re sustainability. Some of the posts will describe what we have already done. Some will describe what we are planning to do. Some will discuss ideas that we intend to implement when it becomes possible. In some cases, technology is not quite appropriate for implementation today. In some cases, the technology is available, but the cost --- whether actual or tax-incentivized --- remains higher than we choose to afford.
But it is truly a joy to be working from a blank slate. When we acquired the small farm we are developing into G2's research farm, it was a little over 20 acres of restored corn (maize) fields. A little more than a decade before we acquired the farm in 2006, the corn fields were converted to an organic market garden and pasture. Fields were sown in grasses and legumes. Sheep and poultry were pastured on much of the farm. A limited acreage of market gardens (including strawberries, raspberries, and grapes) were planted. All of the converted field space was managed to strict organic standards, but the land was never formally certified. Organic certification in the mid-1990s was not very clearly defined, organic standards were still in development, and our predecessors as stewards of this land were in start-up mode. The cost of establishing and maintaining certification was considered high.
We respect that decision.
As we develop the landscape; as we continue to install research plots on the converted organic fields; as we build additional greenhouses and high tunnels --- as we move G2's research farm into the future --- we will continue to respect the effort that has already occurred on our farm. We practice sustainable agriculture to the best of our understanding. We will certify a portion of the field plots so that we can conduct breeding and research on ground which is managed under true organic certification. We will always consider the impact of our presence on the local ecosystems; the local groundwater; and the soils on which we farm.
We hope that you will share in our journey.
One of the many ways in which G2 serves the horticultural industries is that we provide technology assistance to other independent plant breeders.
When we say technology assistance, we are referring to using state-of-the-art modern technology to help a plant breeder make genetic progress. Imagine that you have successfully made an interspecific hybrid, and that the hybrid is sterile. An apparent genetic dead-end. G2 may be able to help you induce fertility in that hybrid, and enable you to continue to breed with that plant as a parent.
Then again, we may have no more success than you did. But if your sterile hybrid is nearing the end of its protected life, and your stream of licensing revenue is about to end, it might be worth the investment to at least explore further breeding opportunities.
We may be able to assist you in making additional interspecific hybrids. Or to induce polyploidy. Or to induce mutations of value. All of these skills are in the G2 toolbox. We would be pleased to discuss the real opportunities with you.
Yes, we are willing to do this even though we may appear to be be competitors. We do this even when we may have competing products in development.
How can this work?
First of all, once we have a mutual non-disclosure in place, we will be able to tell you where our projects may be in conflict. It is our commitment to our clients that we will not compete with them on a project-to-project basis. If you ask us to conduct a product development project on a particular species to fill a specific market niche, we will agree to do so only if we are not conducting a parallel proprietary project.
Neither will we conduct parallel projects for multiple clients. Even though we are comfortable with the concept, and believe that we could successfully run multiple parallel projects for multiple clients in full confidentiality --- we have chosen not to do so. This will make life simpler for all of us.
Are we limiting our future? Not unless we overbook our capacity. Our goal is to have contract research (CR) occupy about half of our operational capacity. Even as we add additional capacity, we intend to limit the CR portion to 50 percent. That puts a cap on the number of projects we can run simultaneously, even as we add capacity. The simple solution is to not work in the same market niche for more than one client.
It has been a dream of mine to combine my experience with analytical chemistry with my passion for plant breeding. What better opportunity than to begin breeding projects to enhance either the yield or the specific composition of plant-derived natural products?
Catharanthus alkaloids: Consider the alkaloids in vinca (Catharanthus roseus). This family of bioactive compounds have been used for decades as anticancer drugs. In particular, the compounds vincristine and vinblastine --- extracted and purified from vinca roots --- are used in treating specific types of cancer. The raw product --- vinca roots, mostly --- is grown on a commercial scale in India and Madagascar.
But most of us in horticulture know Catharanthus as vinca, and think of it as an ornamental plant. Can you breed for increased alkaloid content? The answer, of course, is "Yes". There are actually patents in the literature that describe this very process.
At G2, we consider natural product content to be a characteristic for which you can breed.
Flavor: Have you ever wished that you could grow an intensely-flavored garden-ripe tomato that also had good disease-resistance so that you could easily grow it all season long? Or a gloriously sweet, lusciously aromatic muskmelon, but in a single serving-sized fruit on a short-vined plant in your home garden? How about a disease-resistant bush snap bean with that rich green bean flavor that occurs with some of the heirloom pole beans? At G2, we consider flavor and aroma to be traits for which you can breed.
Fragrance: There have been a number of new lilac releases over the past decade. All are smaller forms, good plants for foundation plantings, or large containers. Most of these are really nice garden plants, but none of them has that intensely fragrant lilac scent which we all associate with the May-blooming species, Syringa vulgaris. At G2, we consider fragrance enhancement to be an approriate goal for a breeding program.
Some of you may be reacting by saying "Yes, but flavor and fragrance aren't really bioactive natural products like those vinca chemicals, are they?" In many cases, the bioactive components in the living plant or its fruit become the natural product once they are extracted and concentrated.
Natural product yield: Imagine being able to increase the amount of purple pigment that a crop like this basil produces. Not only would the intensely purple basil have ornamental potential, if the plant produced enough biomass per hectare, perhaps the purple pigment could be extracted on a commercial scale, especially if it were to be produced under organic conditions. A natural colorant. Produced under sustainable or organic agricultural conditions. High yield of the natural product. At G2, we consider yield enhancement of natural products to be something for which you can breed.
Specific composition enhancement: There are many herbal products which contain trace amounts of secondary products which may have significant side effects. For instance, pennyroyal is a flavorful mint with many potential therapeutic uses. However, pennyroyal also contains the hepatotoxic compound pulegone, which severely limits its use. Is it possible to breed pennyroyal to be pulegone-free (or at least reduce the amount of pulegone)? At G2, we consider specific composition changes to be attainable breeding objectives.
G2 has the facilities to do simple chemistry in our facility. To conduct more sophisticated chemistry, we would outsource to one of the good labs. I spent almost 20 years growing and managing an outsourced analytical chemistry services business, and know this scientific and market space very well. Furthermore, once the required sample analysis volume reaches a critical threshold, we will always consider the cost-effectiveness of building the capacity internally. We consider this experience one of G2's significant advantages in considering natural product germplasm enhancement projects.
We know plant breeding and genetics.
We know analytical chemistry and biochemistry.
We'd enjoy the challenge of combining those two areas of knowledge and expertise.
If this captures your curiosity, give us a call.
What's a Research Grower? For G2, and more specifically, for Mike Owen, it means "Head Grower and Research Farm Manager." Remember, please, that G2 is a start-up. We all wear multiple hats, depending on the day of the week, and the situation. In our day-to-day operation, Mike runs the farm and greenhouses.
Mike grew up in southeastern PA, and worked as a high school student in a local greenhouse, where he learned some of his best work habits. This early experience continues to be of value to Mike to this day.
Mike Owen is a graduate of the Longwood Gardens (LG) Professional Gardener (PG) training program, which is a post-high school equivalent of a BS Horticulture educational program focused at developing professional gardeners, and in particular, professional gardeners seeking careers in public gardens. This program (Longwood's Professional Gardener Training Program) takes young horticulturists and trains them to be public garden horticulturists and growers. Graduates of the LG PG program now work around the world in public and private gardens, in academia, and in industry. 
Longwood clearly knows a good thing when they see one. After Mike graduated from the LG PG program, he was retained by LG, and ultimately spent 26 years there. While with LG, he managed their interns; propagation and production for the conservatory and outdoor gardens; and the entire Longwood orchid collection.
Mike was the site manager for the construction of LG's production facilities, and as such, developed a good working relationship with the greenhouse construction industry. This lead to a consulting arrangement with Rough Brothers. The combination of Mike's orchid experience and his conservatory construction management experience created for Mike an extremely unique opportunity: he was offered the site responsibility for Ventura Farms, a 2000 A private estate outside of Thousand Oaks, CA, in Ventura County. Mike had three primary responsibilities at Ventura Farms: To construct and manage a 30,000 SF conservatory; to procure and produce ornamental plants, vegetables and rare fruits in an ecologically friendly and sustainable fashion; and to develop what is now one of the largest private orchid collections in the U.S.
Five years later, with the conservatory constructed; the orchid collection well in hand; and management of the grounds running smoothly, Mike decided that he and his wife needed a break from the California life, and relocated to ... the banks of the Missouri River in Montana. Mike is an avid trout fisherman --- notice the pattern on his shirt in the picture above --- and living on the Missouri had been a lifelong dream. However ... as Mike discovered, fishing (or working as a guide for tourists) has its career limitations. Mike began wondering if there were opportunities for him to re-enter the horticultural industry in some way, and began watching the online job postings.
In January, 2008, G2 posted a job announcement for a Research Grower, and Mike responded. This job was in PA. Mike and his wife grew up in and still have family in PA. But even more significantly, G2's mailing address is in Bellefonte, PA. Bellefonte is home of The Big Spring, where a high-quality, high-volume limestone spring emerges from the earth, and supplies one of Pennsylvania's best trout streams. Just outside of Bellefonte, upstream from where The Big Spring enters Spring Creek, is Fisherman's Paradise. Spring Creek is one of the world's premier trout fisheries. Last year, the International Youth Fly Fishing World Championships were held on Spring Creek, between Fisherman's Paradise and State College. Spring Creek actually runs adjacent to parts of Penn State University.
The entirety of central PA is full of wonderful trout water. Spruce Creek. Penn's Creek. Honey Creek. Elk Creek. Pine Creek. Spring Creek. To a flyfisher, Bellefonte is a very recognizable name.
So ... Mike applied for our grower position. Immediately, his LG experience jumped out at us. How many commercial growers have the breadth and depth of production experience that someone maintaining the Conservatory at Longwood Gardens would have? Running a research greenhouse is different from running a production facility. More species, fewer numbers of any one species or variety, many different plant maturities growing at the same time. We felt that a grower with LG experience could be a very good fit for G2.
During the phone interviews, the Montana experience lead to conversations about fishing. After all, it's a significant change in direction. So ...
When Mike flew into State College, we picked him up at his hotel in town. We took "the long way" out to G2's research farm. The back roads along Spring Creek from State College. To Fisherman's Paradise (about 1.5 mi from the farm). And finally to the farm itself, with the greenhouses in the midst of construction. We both think that he had the job --- and we had a grower --- by the time we got to the farm.
Since he has been with G2, Mike has become an integral part of what G2 is doing. He worked side-by-side with the contractors during construction of our research greenhouses, earning their almost immediate respect for his knowledge of greenhouse construction. He managed and worked side-by-side with the seasonal help transplanting, planting, weeding. He cleared fencerow with the seasonal crew and worked with a local landscape firm to develop an arboretum feel to the landscaping of G2's research farm. He routinely does our daily hand-watering, spraying and fertilization. He's built our hot-water-heated propagation benches; our potting benches; our shade structure.
Mike is also in a consulting role to the development of The Arboretum at Penn State. It is clear to all of us that Mike's experience in conservatory construction and management is something we need to be comfortable in sharing with our campus friends and colleagues.
If you come to visit G2's research farm, you will notice that it runs smoothly. We give Mike Owen full credit for this. He makes the rest of our lives much easier because he manages the farm and greenhouses so well. We get to focus on breeding because Mike is handling the greenhouses and farm.
And for us, this is the way it should be.
Today, we consider the abundance of horticultural one-hit wonders, and how G2 might be able to help you keep the one-hit wonder problem out of your plant product portfolio.
How often has a single product captured the imagination of the entire industry, and then ... there was never a follow-up product, nor a line expansion. All of the marketing dollars invested in developing a brand presence for a single product, and that investment could never be leveraged ... because there were no line expansions. That's a one-hit wonder.
Granted, sometimes expanding a single truly unique product is simply not possible because of genetic reasons. Consider Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'. 'Goldsturm' is a wonderful product. Hardy, floriferous, grown and loved around the world. But there's never really been a line extension made in this crop by anyone. There are some very good genetic reasons for this. Rudbeckia fulgida is apomictic, meaning that the seed it makes is virtually 100% like the seed (maternal) parent. If you want to produce 'Goldsturm' from seed, this is a good thing: every seed produces a plant which is identical to the original parent plant. But if you want to improve 'Goldsturm', if you want to breed a series of varieties around 'Goldsturm', if you want to develop line extensions based on 'Goldsturm' --- apomixis means that you are out of luck. You cannot use 'Goldsturm' as a seed parent and have ANY of the seed incorporate genetic material from the pollen parent. All seed produced on 'Goldsturm' is identical to the mother plant.
Yes, there is the occasional 'Goldsturm' sport that appears to be different, but then gets lost. Sometimes, the sport is even a real genetic change so that it is seed-transmissable, even through apomixis. The Dupont Nursery release 'Early Bird Gold' may be one of these very rare events. We've seen this variety in a garden center, but have not yet grown it ourselves.
Campanula persicifolia is another good example of an unusual genetic phenomenon limiting the breeder's ability to improve existing varieties. If you were to look at the chromosomes of C. persicifolia under a microscope, you would discover that the chromosomes actually form rings. This does not interfere with the species ability to form viable seed, but it DOES limit the ability of the chromosomes to pair up during meiosis. Without chromosome pairing, there is very little opportunity for crossing-over (recombination), and without recombination, there is no mixing of the genetic structure when you make crosses. This is a serious limitation to effective plant breeding.
Or the hardy perennial geranium 'Rozanne' a sterile interspecific hybrid of G. wallichianum x G. himalayense. 'Rozanne' was introduced by Bloom's of Bressingham. This is how Bloom's describes the invention of 'Rozanne' on their website: "Donald and Rozanne Waterer collected seed from two geraniums growing as neighbors in their garden in Somerset, England. From the resultant seedlings, 'Rozanne' stood out as being exceptional, featuring stronger growth, larger flowers and leaves than their parent plants." The hybrid vigor observed by the Waterers in the seedling they eventually named 'Rozanne' is frequently observed in interspecific hybrids --- if you can get them to nick, and if the seedling survives. Many of the one-hit wonders in the horticultural world have resulted from this random nursery mating strategy. "Random" is a good strategy for one-hit wonders, but it is not a good strategy for a sustainable series of product line extensions.
One-hit wonders. A constant challenge to the breeder, as well as to the marketing team.
However ...
One of the reasons that we started G2 was to take "random" and turn it into "methodical". To take the traditional nurseryman's 'Bee's Hybrid' process and turn it into a planned, somewhat predictable, much more scientific method of developing new products. No, we are certainly not overlooking serendipity. Or chance. Or luck. Or grace. Indeed, we consider all of those to be significant components of the overall process of plant breeding, especially in herbaceous and woody perennial species.
In the words of the first century Greek philosopher Seneca: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." We see G2's mission, in part, to enable large parts of the horticultural industry to move from being largely dependent on "random" for new product development to becoming "methodical." For G2, in this context "methodical" means "with planning and preparation." Study, experimentation, and trial runs. Applying the traditional scientific method --- observe, hypothesize, test, change, repeat. The more things you try, the more likely that you will observe something of value. If you are prepared to see serendipity, the more likely it will occur.
G2 might be able to help you create a series of well-matched line expansions to what might otherwise become one-hit wonders. Not every independent plant breeder has the capacity or expertise to break through some of the genetic (or even conceptual) barriers which made the initial release so popular. Before you throw your hands in the air and say "It just can't be done", give G2 a call. True, there will be times when we agree with you that it can't be done. But we may also see a path that you may have overlooked. We may even be able to help move your product to that new path.
It's worth the phone call.
Effective use of internal resources should always be part of your management discussions. How can you develop more varieties? How can you do this even faster? How can you enable your breeding staff to be more productive? In the current global economy, part of that answer needs to be outsourcing. Unless you have unlimited internal resources, it is almost always more cost-effective to outsource the routine or repetitive portions of any project, and keep the creative tasks for your internal staff. G2 is pleased to be able to bring outsourced contract breeding resources to the horticultural industries.
Off-cycle seed increase: Are you doing most of your generation advancement in the field each year? Let G2 provide you with an additional generation each year by doing a cycle of seed increase in our greenhouses over the winter. We can self or mass to your specifications, with or without data collection.
Experimental hybrid production: Do you need a few hundred seeds of each of dozens to hundreds of experimental crosses? We may be able to help. Send us your inbreds-in-development, and we can use our excess capacity to make your experimental hybrids for you. And at the same time, of course, we could do an additional round of inbreeding in parallel. No, we may not always have capacity available, but when we do, we would be pleased to make it available to you.
Germplasm integration:
Demonstration of concept:
G2 provides contract breeding services to the horticultural industries. What does this mean? One aspect of this service is that we conduct full-blown de novo product development for some of our clients. You bring an idea to us. G2 develops the product, from germplasm acquisition to ready-for-release final breeding and selection.
For example, you may want to develop a vegetatively-propagated series of varieties in a crop which traditionally has been seed-propagated. Consider the recent developments in Echinacea. A decade ago, coneflowers were virtually all seed-produced. Then Jim Ault at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, and Richard Saul at ItSaul Nurseries in Atlanta, GA, made interspecific hybrids between E. purpurea, E. paradoxa, and E. angustifolia. These extended the color range of coneflowers to include reds and oranges, and generated a huge number of tissue-cultured and vegetatively-propagated varieties. Seed into vegetative. G2 has the experience and capabilities to enable you to do these kinds of long-term development projects, whether we complete the breeding, or whether we pass it back to your breeders in a rough state so that you can do the finish breeding under your conditions and control.
Similarly, G2 can help you take a vegetatively-propagated crop, and determine whether it can be converted into a seed-propagated crop. For example, consider the exceptional work which Dr. Ellen Leue at PanAmerican Seeds (a Ball Horticultural company) did with Angelonia. Before PanAm's Serena series, angelonia was only a cutting-propagated crop. Now, as a seed crop, angelonia can be produced from plugs and cuttings. The grower has more options. The market for this genus is more open in ways which benefit the grower and the consumer. G2 has the experience and capabilities to enable you to expand the market for a vegetatively-propagated crop by expanding it into a seed-propagated one.
Or, you may see an opportunity to improve the producibility of a crop, and thus give the grower an advantage. Think about crops in which few of the existing varieties are well-matched. Calibrachoa, for example. Wouldn't your sales team be able to capture a larger share of the total calibrachoa market if your series was so well-matched that a grower could bench-run the entire crop. All colors matched in height and PGR requirements (if any). All colors matched in nutrient efficiency and environmental response. All colors coming into bloom within a 3 day window under normal seasonal cycles. All colors responding to a standard potting mix in the same way, allowing you to fertilize and irrigate the entire crop the same way.
What about regal geraniums, Pelagonium xdomesticum? What if you could produce a crop of regals to a schedule, with all colors blooming together. With a rooting efficiency of >95%. Needing no additional lighting or cooling treatments to induce flowering? Which could be grown alongside your zonal crop, running at the same temperatures, in the same media, to the same schedule?
These are the kinds of CR projects which get us excited at G2. We can help you to develop these kinds of projects. With our good clients, we appreciate the opportunity to brainstorm and vision with you so that we can better help you develop better plant products.
