Good to grow

With more than 100 of his varieties on the market — and even more in the pipeline — plant breeder and geneticist Rick Grazzini, Ph.D., is well-known across the industry. Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’ve likely heard of the varieties he has produced, whether through his own company, GardenGenetics, or in partnership with the industry’s leading breeders and distributors.

Throughout his 40-year plant breeding career, Grazzini has bred everything from Argyranthemum to zinnia, from annuals and herbaceous perennials, vegetables and herbs to flowering woody ornamentals — spanning more than 100 genera in all. Asking him which was his favorite is like asking which of his seven grandchildren he favors: it’s impossible to choose, but he has plenty of stories about them all.

Going independent

Growing up around his family’s vegetable garden, Grazzini naturally gravitated toward plant-based classes while earning his biology undergrad degree at Penn State, where he fell in love with genetics. Between teaching high school science and starting his plant career in seed production, Grazzini went back to school to earn a master’s degree in horticultural science from Purdue and later a doctorate in genetics back at Penn State, where he studied pest resistance in geranium. While earning his Ph.D., Grazzini also ran business development for an analytical chemistry lab that offered contract services to the crop protection industry. He grew the lab from three employees to 20 within a few years, rising through the ranks to president and eventually acquiring ownership interest in 2001.

“We grew it very aggressively,” says Grazzini, who sold the company in 2006. Not ready to retire at age 53, Grazzini used the proceeds to launch GardenGenetics in 2007. Initially, GardenGenetics (G2) started out performing contract research breeding for major plant development companies, while developing its own genetics independently. “The real vision was to develop our own product portfolio so that we could patent and license to other companies,” Grazzini says. “We wanted to control our own intellectual property.”

Grazzini phased out of fee-for-service contract breeding completely by 2016, focusing on G2’s own intellectual property development. “Once you have a couple successes getting new products to market, the incentive to do it independently becomes pretty strong,” he says.

Seeking negative space

Grazzini looks for untapped breeding opportunities in what he calls “the negative space,” borrowing from graphic design terminology, to avoid the competition of “the positive space,” which is full of common varieties dominated by major breeders of plants like petunias. “For me to compete in that space is silly,” he says, “because I’d have to uncover something so dramatically different that the large players haven’t done themselves. So, I look for the negative space: where aren’t they breeding?”

Though he might approach a plant in the negative space with specific targets related to foliage color or flower size, Grazzini’s ultimate goal is producing plants that don’t just look great, but grow well. “I can improve almost anything to make it better in the garden and better for the grower, whether it’s disease tolerance, pest tolerance or better growth habits,” he says.

For example, a trait he typically targets is early blooming, because plants that bloom sooner tend to germinate faster — accelerating the entire production process. “If I handle a crop, there will always be a production spin to it,” he says, “because if we can’t make it easy to grow or the grower can’t produce enough units per year, it’s not worth releasing.”

Pruning back

At its peak, GardenGenetics employed up to 25 people full-time, operating on a 20-acre research farm with a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse dedicated to breeding. But as the 10-year anniversary approached, Grazzini realized the business was far from profitable. In early 2017, he made the difficult decision to downsize, restructuring and drastically reducing the staff.

“By 2019, we were marginally profitable, and by 2022, things were rolling smoothly,” he says. During that same timeframe, his daughter’s family relocated to Columbus, Ohio; he and his wife decided to follow and sold the research farm to Penn State.

In preparation for the move, Grazzini started putting plant selections into tissue culture to build a pipeline for future projects. “There are probably 150 ready-to-release varieties living in my tissue culture lab,” says Grazzini, who also collected “a refrigerator full of seeds, knowing I would eventually have enough greenhouse space to grow a few populations.”

Although technically “semi-retired,” Grazzini, 70, still has plenty of breeding underway. He’s currently leasing a few thousand square feet of greenhouse space and expects to double his capacity over the next couple years.

“My goal is to complete the projects that have the most meaning to me and to spend more time mentoring, which I find extremely rewarding,” says Grazzini, who mentors a handful of growers around the world as a way of passing his breeding knowledge to the next generation. “Plant breeding is a learned practice, because none of us have all the knowledge we need.”

Brooke Bilyj owns and operates Bantamedia, a national award-winning content, PR and SEO firm based in Cleveland. She is a frequent contributor to GIE Media’s horticulture publications.