Edible Toronto

The (Sometimes) Fruitful Work of a Fruit Breeder

• Photo by Aaron Lynett

  Jayasankar Subramanian, professor and tree-fruit breeder at the University of Guelph, picks the C85221 variety of peaches at Vineland’s Victoria Farm orchard. With his research, he is trying to create the next great peach and plum.

• Subramanian has been working with fruit crops for 25 years. He has experience with tropical fruits such as banana, mango and citrus, but is now focused on stone fruits — peaches, nectarines and plums.

• Much of Subramanian's work takes place in the fruit biotechnology lab at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.

• In addition to traditional fruit-breeding techniques (which use tools such as a paintbrush), Subramanian is an expert in fruit biotechnology. He uses advances in cell culture and molecular genetics to complement his research and classes. Above, he is working on the genome mix of tender fruits.