David Ramming
2013 Hall of Fame Inductee 

I'm David Ramming. I'm a retired research horticulturist and I work for the Agricultural Research Service at the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in Parlier, California. 

I grew up on a rural farm in Oklahoma, a very small town, and actually my graduating class was 7 boys and I was very blessed because my father left his prestigious job in Oklahoma City as director of the Soil Conservation Service and moved his family to the farm, his father-in-law's farm, when I was 9 months old and that really gave me the agriculture background that I have today. 

The major professors that I had at Oklahoma State University as well as Rutgers, for example Herman Hinrichs at Oklahoma State was in charge of a tree fruit, apple, peach, grape and pecan breeding program and he had the first influence at a student level and influenced me ...  influencing me to go into breeding as well as than I had the opportunity to participate in Dr. Bailey and Dr. Hoff's breeding program at Rutgers. They were very gratuitous in allowing me to work in their program as well as giving me the  freedom to make selections and really just learn about breeding and the extent of it. But actually I was interested in breeding even when I was in the 6th grade and Luther Burbank was sort of my role model. He had developed a number of different varieties of different plant species and so as a young boy I actually tried to hybridize a bush squash with a wild buffalo gourd. The reason was the bush squash we had to plant every year and I wanted a variety that we wouldn't have to plant every year and so I've had an interest in breeding all along but it's been my dad's and father's influence on the farm as well as the instructors at my masters level and PhD level. 

I started with Agricultural Research Service after I graduated with my PhD from Rutgers and I started in Fresno and I started in the dream job that I always dreamed about and have been with Agricultural Research Service the 38 years of my career in the breeding program at Fresno, in Parlier California. 

Well, when I was growing up I was very interested in breeding and developing new varieties and creating new varieties any kind of plant and I think the influence of my father in planting a home orchard and he was also a horticulturist and then a country agent in Oklahoma before he took his Soil Conservation Service position and so that influenced a really interest in fruit crops and then my major professor in horticulture of course was breeding tree fruits and grapes and that's the first chance I had to evaluate  production or grape varieties instead of just tasting wild grapes. 

We have made quiet a few amazing, or good, discoveries during my career. The latest discovery that really is exciting is the development of a natural dried on the vine, we call it DOV, raisin grape and traditionally in raisin production the growers have workers pick the fruit and lay them on paper trays on the ground to dry and that is very labor intensive and at the current time a lot of the growers don't always have the labor available to them when it's needed. We've been working on a way to mechanically harvest raisins and so we've developed earlier ripening vanities where you can cut the canes to induce the drying of the fruit into raisins and then they can mechanically harvest which saves on labor as well as not putting the fruit in close proximity to the ground which can cause contamination. 

But now, with this new selection, this new variety that we are getting ready to introduce, it automatically dries by itself on the vine without cutting canes and without applying any drying aids. So all the growers will have to do is come in and mechanically harvest and then take the fruit to the processor without any costly cutting of the canes like they have to do currently or picking the fruit by hand and putting it down on the ground.

Another very important discovery was the development of our embryo culture or rescue technique. As you know, seedless grapes you don't see a seed in them. Actually there is an "aborted" seed in the seedless grapes that you get in the grocery store and inside that "aborted" seed is a little tiny embryo and we've developed a method, a tissue culture method, were we can recover take that little embryo put it in tissue culture an artificial media let it grow into a plant and you might says "Well why what's the big deal about that?" Well that allows us now to hybridize one seedless variety with another seedless variety and grow those little "aborted" embryos into plants where before we had to use a seeded female as a parent that would produce a plant. Well, now we get a 100% seedlings, little baby grapes with seedless fruit where in the past only 15% on the average produced seedless fruit so that's made the breeding program very efficient and has enabled us to develop the number of varieties in table grape and raisin grape industry today.

Well, I was very blessed to be able to work with ARS because one of the things ARS has allowed me to do is to continue a long-term breeding program. Even though ARS works on 5 year project plans, they still foster the type of research that is long-term which is necessary for breeding projects in grapes or tree fruits or plants or organisms that have long life cycles so it's very important. Also what was fantastic is that I got to build on two previous researchers' work so actually the grape breeding program started back in 1916 when the first germplasm was assembled and then in 1920 when the first great crosses were made. So,  then I started in 1975 where already an active and well-known program was going. 

The most important part of my role or role in USDA ARS was developing new varieties for the industry. I saw my first role as helping the industry providing them varieties that would be helpful for make them more successful as well as provide the consumer with a better product. After that we had the responsibility of developing new breeding techniques and new information about the germplasm that we had. That helped other scientists in the grape breeding world as well as any other industry that might pick up the techniques that we developed. And, then finally with USDA I had the chance to be a mentor to a number of students that worked for us during the summer and so it gave me a great chance to try to instill in them work ethics and just the excitement of doing research and working with their hands.

The support and the ability to collaborate with other scientists within USDA as well as with universities both nationally and internationally was very important and that was allowed where in the private industry sometimes you are limited and you cannot collaborate with other scientists. 

Truly, being induced into the Hall of Fame is an honor but it's really a humbling experience. It's like the question how could a young boy from a small rural area in Oklahoma graduating high school class of only 7 boys could be here at this point today and in answer to that really the only way it's possible is because of the close team I had to work with. My right hand technician Ron Tarailo who is co-inventor of grapes varieties that we developed as well as Rick Emershad, my laboratory scientist, who we co-developed the embryo rescue technique with, and then Satomi Hiyama who is in charge of the embryo rescue work in greenhouse to produce all of these seedlings that were necessary in our breeding program to develop the varieties that we did. Also I just have to give thanks to the professors that encouraged me, to industry that gave support and interaction and allowed me to work with them to develop varieties for them as well as then the support of my wife that she gave me during this time as well.