Horticulture Innovators – Details, episodes & analysis

Ockert Greyvenstein joined Ball Horticultural Company, in 2014 as plant breeder with PanAmerican
Seed. A transplant from South Africa, he came to the US for graduate school, first earning his master's at Cornell, followed by a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Texas A&M University in 2013. Currently, he is the Regional Breeding Director based in Elburn, IL, overseeing breeding operations in Illinois and Costa Rica with projects ranging from Angelonia to Zebra-striped tomatoes. During his time with Ball he bred several crops including Viola, Vinca, Cuphea, cut-flower Delphinium, and a few others. His expertise is in breeding, and applied research. 

Ball Horticulture: https://www.ballhort.com/

Brad Abrameit is a 1994 and 1996 graduate of Texas A&M University with a B.S. and M.S. in Horticulture. He is the President at Magnolia Gardens Nursery. Brad leads all functions of the container(165 acres) and tissue culture division (20 acres), both strategically and tactically. He is charged with stabilizing, professionalizing, and preparing the business for growth. He is an executive leader bringing 27+ years of experience in the horticulture industry to the forefront, driving strategic initiatives and have propelled the company to consistent growth. A proven track record of successful launches and market expansion, recognized for fostering a collaborative environment that empowers teams to innovate and deliver exceptional results.

Magnolia Gardens: https://magnoliagardens.com/

Jim Antwerp is a 1990 graduate of Texas A& M University with a B.S. in Horticulture with a study emphasis in horticulture of Wholesale Nursery Management and Production and a study emphasis outside horticulture in Business. Having a horticulture career that began with home gardening in youth, working later as nursery labor and subsequently rising in Nursery Management, he has served as Vice President at Flower wood Nursery Inc and currently at Greenleaf Nursery which are two large
woody ornamental nursery operations. Both of these companies are family owned and have celebrated their 75th anniversary of operation and counting.

Ph.D. student Mason Marshall and undergraduate student Trishia Nguyen discuss what influenced their decision to pursue Horticulture as well as what they wish to accomplish in the future in the field of horticulture.

Mason Marshall is a PhD student in the department of horticulture. He is from Odessa, Texas and ventured to Texas A&M in 2017 for his bachelor's degree in horticulture. Currently in his third year, Mason's research aims to characterize the phenotypic variation in Ratibida columnifera, the prairie coneflower, along with cut-flower and production studies. After graduation, he plans to find a lecturer position at a University.

Trishia Nguyen is a first generation B.S Horticultural Sciences student entering her senior year. Shifting her focus around a couple times, she has found her place in landscape design. After graduating with her Bachelor's she looks forward to pursuing a Masters in Landscape Architecture.  Trishia would like to emphasize that horticulture is for anyone! As someone with limited exposure to the industry outside of the foods that she ate and the botanical gardens she visited, attending Texas A&M has opened up her world to how ever-present horticulture is in every aspect of her life.

Prof. Arun Sharma received his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India, in 1987 after carrying out work on the regulation of nitrate assimilation by phytochrome in the laboratory of Prof. Sudhir Sopory. He performed post-doctoral work with Dr. G. Kumar at the School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, in 1998 and at Wayne State University, Detroit, from 1989 to 1991, in the area of DNA-protein interaction. He did post-doctoral work with Prof. Sudhir Sopory at JNU, New Delhi, from 1991-94 and with Professor Akhilesh Tyagi at University of Delhi, South Campus (UDSC) from 1995-1997 in the area of signal transduction during the regulation of genes in plants. He became Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, UDSC in 1997, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and Professor in 2010. At UDSC, he worked from 1997 to 2023 in the area of structural and functional genomics of tomato and other areas. The work included sequencing a part of chromosome 5 as a member of the International Tomato Genome Consortium and the development of tomato plants with improved nutritional quality and longer shelf life. The other areas of research had been the role of methylated DNA-binding proteins in gene silencing in Arabidopsis and tomato, and the development of an edible vaccine against cholera. Prof. Sharma was nominated as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, in 2012.

Dr. Haven Baker co-founded Pairwise and served as Chief Business Officer from 2017 to 2024. Under his leadership, Pairwise secured $ 110 M+ of funding, completed multiple crop development deals, and launched the first CRISPR product in North America. Haven is the former Senior Vice President / General Manager of Simplot Plant Sciences, where he led the team that launched the innovative, non-browning Innate® potato. He holds a PhD in chemistry from Northeastern University, an MBA from Harvard University, and a BS in biomedical engineering from Yale University. Hailing from central Washington state, Baker describes himself as an “over-educated farm kid.” A lover of the outdoors, Haven enjoys hiking, fishing, and hunting in his native Pacific Northwest. Currently, Baker is forming a new agriculture-focused start-up company.

Anna Caroline Ball is Chairman and CEO of the 119-year-old Ball Horticultural Company, which specializes in all aspects of horticulture, including breeding, biotechnology, production, and marketing of hybrid flower seeds and other floriculture crops. Privately-held and now in its fourth generation of family management, Ball Horticultural Company has 4,000 employees and operates in over 20 countries worldwide.

Anna received her B.A. degree from the University of Colorado and her M.B.A. from Northwestern University. She is a Trustee of The Morton Arboretum and head of the G. Carl Ball Family Foundation. She is the Chairman of Career Vision, an organization focused on the discovery and development of human potential through the development and delivery of aptitude testing and career exploration. Anna lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Lisa Whittlesey is an employee of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and received her bachelor and master’s degrees from Texas A&M University in horticulture with an emphasis in education/curriculum development.

Lisa serves as the program director for the JMG’s International Junior Master Gardener program which currently operates in all 50 states and has expanded internationally through collaborative partnerships with the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, JMG Korea, and expansions through US Military and National Guard projects.

She is the author/co-author of nine award winning youth environmental curriculums and her horticulture work and expertise has been featured in over 170 popular press/newspaper articles including Saturday Evening Post, Southern Living, Better Homes and Garden, Readers Digest, Cosmopolitan, Family Life, seven national children’s magazines, local/regional television appearances and on HGTV. She has been an invited speaker to over 275 regional and national conferences and her recent work has focused on utilizing the Junior Master Gardener program (Learn, Grow, Eat & GO curricula) as an intervention as a part of a 5-year USDA AFRI funded Extension and Research project focused on child and family interventions for obesity prevention.

In additional to her work with the JMG Program, Lisa provides leadership to horticulture programming, staff development/management and as a PI federal contact with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Windham Schools – TDCJ, and with Lee College prison programming efforts. Lisa is a guest lecturer for floral design and socio-horticulture classes at Texas A&M University and does educational videos for the public through Texas A&M AgriLife Extension social media outlets.

Dr. Steve George is a Professor and Extension Horticulturist, and Landscape Horticulture Specialist since 1988 for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and is headquartered at the Texas A&M Research and Extension Center in north Dallas.  Dr. George created the Earth-Kind® Environmental Landscape Management System and serves as the National Coordinator of the Earth-Kind® Rose Program.

Kait Thornton, 4th generation apple and pear grower from Tonasket, Washington. Along with college classes, fruit sales, and work on the farm, Kait spends her time educating her over 450,000 followers across social media on farming and what it’s like to be a farmer!