Embryo Rescue

The R&D Center houses an advanced Embryo Rescue Laboratory. Early-ripening stone fruit varieties, and all seedless grape varieties have small immature embryos that must be cultured individually in test tubes in order to produce a hybrid seedling. The lab, directed by Sharon Rosenthal, includes a tissue culture preparation room, an embryo rescue and extraction room, a seedling growth room and four climate-controlled greenhouses.

Embryo Rescue: Early-ripening stone fruit varieties, and all seedless grape varieties have small immature embryos that must be cultured individually in test tubes to grow a hybrid seedling. Many people are surprised that ‘seedless’ grapes have an embryo at all, but each one is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence and must be excised with the aid of a microscope. Of the million or so flowers pollinated each year, we harvest and process tens of thousands of embryos in test tubes.  These hybrid ‘test tube babies’ go on to be planted in our greenhouses to grow during the fall and winter months.