A Visit to Griswold Agricultural Experiment Station

On Thursday, June 16th, there was an open house at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station research farm in Griswold. My husband wanted to go and see it so we drove there for their 10-2 p.m. Open House. It did not disappoint. We met a lot of neat people (scientists) who do experiments on tomatoes, grape vines, American chestnut trees and peach trees. They were available to answer questions from the public. We were interested in the experiments that they were doing with grape vines.

We spoke with Francis Ferrandino, associate scientist in the experiment station's plant pathology and ecology department. Francis is trying to help the state's vintners target powdery mildew controls on wine grapevines by using up-to-the hour weather data. The Griswold experiment station has Chardonnay as well as hybrid grape vines. The severe weather in January, damaged the chardonnay grapes, but hybrids with genes of native American grapes survived and did well.