Week Three (June 17 - 21st)

The shoots are growing quickly! Really, some have grown almost a foot this week!

Lots of the trunks are curvy (since they were improperly staked up and bent under the weight of the fruit and shoots). Generally we either try to straighten them out by tying them better to bamboo, but at times we resort to growing a completely new vine from a sucker.

We have officially started the grape breeding process at the HRC. In order to ensure that the plant's offspring are genetically crossed correctly, we are spending hours emasculating tiny flowers daily. Some varieties bloom before others, so all of this work needs to be completed in a fairly narrow time-frame. To me this process is similar to performing hundreds of little surgeries since it takes a long time (~30 min/cluster) and is easy to screw up. These surgeries consist of us removing the flower cap before it springs off naturally (as well as removing the ones which have naturally popped) and then tweezing the male organs (anthers, which basically are packets of pollen) from every flower of the cluster. We are doing this to ensure that the flower does not self-pollinate, a process which would naturally happen as the cap springs off. This is hard to do since pollen is microscopic and pollination only requires two grains to come in contact with the sticky end (stigma) of the female portion of the flower (pistil). Once we have removed all of the pollen and caps, without accidentally brushing pollen from the tweezers or our fingers on the pistil, we then secure a waxpaper bag tightly around the emasculated cluster. This prevents pollen from landing on the stigmas while they mature for two days. At this point we remove the bags and and cross the plants with pollen from other varieties. To do this we would sterilize our hands and with our finger we dabbed pollen, which we took from a statically charged petri dishes, onto the end of each pistil. Over multiple generations of crossing European with native North American grapes, this program has yielded thousands of plants (~10,000 at the HRC) and multiple patented varieties (Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, Marquette, Eidelweiss, La Crescent) which successfully grow in MN soils and withstand its harsh climate.

The top flowers have been emasculated, but the bottom ones still retain their caps and anthers. It's tricky to pry the caps off without crushing/bruisng the ovary and/or breaking the pistils off.

Once pollinated, the bag will remain on the cluster for the rest of the growing season in order to ensure the protection of the hybridzed seeds.

We also spent a good amount of time removing leaves and lateral shoots from the fruiting zone of the vine. This allows adequate airflow around the clusters, which will hopefully prevent moisture from accumulating on the fruit and canopy. If it remains wet for too long, various kinds of fungi will take advantage of the opportunity and decompose the plant. This could destroy research results at the HRC and whole yields in commercial vineyards.

Now all the flower clusters are airy and hopefully fungi free!

Fun fact: The first five nodes of a shoot were preformed in a bud during the previous growing season. The first node always will have a leaf coming out of it (which acts as a shield to the clusters and will be sacrificed if there happens to be an early frost). The second and third nodes have grape clusters. The fourth has leaves and the fifth has a third cluster. The sixth node onward are all new growth from this growing season. They alternate between leaves and tendrils, which appear as needed. Since this pattern exists for all grape vines shoots, it is necessary for a manager to properly expose/harden the wood/buds during this season in order to ensure next year's grapes.

These are parent plants in the greenhouse. Pollen is collected from these vines and saved in a freezer for future crosses. Most of these plants are Vitis Vinifera (true EU grapes), but they have come from vineyards scattered around the world. 

We transplanted almost 300 seedlings and cuttings from a greenhouse to the nursery on Wednesday. In order to carry out this process we first made a trench and then dug holes every foot. To plant them we freed the roots, splayed them in the bottom of a hole, filled the holes in with fine dirt and gave them a little water. The plants will remain here for this season in order to bulk up their root systems. After this happens they will be brought back indoors for the winter. They are stored in peat in a cellar and then planted in the vineyards the following year. Since they need ~3 years before they produce fruit, they in actuality are already five years old at this time.
  

Planting the nursery! It flooded the next day. Yay rain and global climate change!