Proven Winners Taking a New Approach to Plant Trials in 2025
August 6, 2025 
Photo: Brian Sparks
Proven Winners has announced a major shift in its plant trial process that will be implemented this trial season. In a recent newsletter, Proven Winners Vice President of Product Development Kevin Hurd says the company has completely restructured its system to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance plant selection.
Traditionally, new varieties were first evaluated in greenhouse trials before moving to outdoor field trials. But this year, Proven Winners is flipping the process, prioritizing outdoor summer field trials first. This new approach allows it to:
- Identify top performers early by assessing plants in real-world outdoor conditions before investing in greenhouse trials.
- Eliminate weaker varieties sooner, ensuring only the best candidates move forward for evaluations like rooting trials and flowering earliness.
- Reduce development costs by maximizing our use of expansive outdoor trial spaces, which are far more cost-effective than controlled greenhouse environments.
“Expanding our three outdoor trial sites gives us greater capacity to evaluate more breeding while optimizing space, timing and efficiency,” Hurd says.
A New Database for a New System
With this updated trialing process, Proven Winners needed a better way to track and manage data, so it developed a new trial system and database to replace its outdated, fragmented systems.
Internally programmed by Proven Winners’ Dave Gray, this powerful new database integrates all trial records, data, and photos into one streamlined system, enabling:
- Faster, more efficient record organization
- Seamless migration of historical and new trial data
- Integration with a photo app for better tracking and analysis of plant performance
These advancements optimize space, labor, and productivity, allowing the company to identify and develop top-performing plant varieties more effectively and cost efficiently.
“At Proven Winners, our mission is to deliver high-value plants that exceed customer expectations,” Hurd says. “These innovations will ensure we continue doing just that year after year.”
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