The Agricultural Experiment Station

At the northern edge of Geneva, a research institution has been operating since eighteen eighty-two that most people in the Finger Lakes wine country have reason to thank but very few could name. The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station was established by the state legislature in eighteen eighty to study the science of agriculture for New York farmers. The legislature chose Geneva as the site because the Finger Lakes region was already emerging as a center of fruit growing, and the climate, soils, and existing agricultural expertise made it the logical location.

The station became operative on March first, eighteen eighty-two, after the state purchased a one-hundred-twenty-five-acre property in Geneva for twenty-five thousand dollars. From the beginning, its work included research on grape varieties suited to the cold growing seasons of upstate New York. The Finger Lakes growers of the late nineteenth century faced a fundamental constraint: the classic European wine grape varieties could not survive the hard winters of central New York. The station's breeding programs aimed to develop cold-hardy varieties that could.

Over more than a century, the station, affiliated with Cornell University, developed grape varieties that became workhorses of the New York wine industry and contributed to the broader science of cold-climate viticulture. It also did foundational work on apple breeding, plant disease resistance, and orchard pest management. The Finger Lakes wine industry that now comprises well over a hundred wineries and has earned international recognition rests, in part, on the decades of patient breeding and research conducted on this campus in Geneva.