Greenhouse Grower Medal of Excellence Awards: Readers’ Choice Award Winner, Industry’s Choice Award Finalists

Posted by Brian Sparks|July 29, 2020

Greenhouse Grower’s Medal of Excellence Awards, which in years past have been announced during an evening reception at Cultivate, are a great way to recognize excellence in plant breeding, innovation in greenhouse technology, and more.

While it’s disappointing we can’t be with you in person at Cultivate this week to honor this year’s award winners, we’re grateful that technology allows us to continue the Medal of Excellence tradition, even if it’s in a slightly different format.

Throughout the month of July and into the first week in August, be sure to watch for a video in our Benchrunner enewsletter announcing one Medal of Excellence award winner each week. Also, this year we will honor the winners of our Grower of the Year and Operation of the Year awards at Greenhouse Grower’s new GROW Executive Summit event in December. You can learn more about this new event at GrowExecutiveSummit.com.

Last week, we announced the finalists for the Readers’ Choice Award. This year there were seven entries from leading breeders, and you narrowed these selections down to three finalists and voted for an overall winner during Cultivate’20 Virtual. Check out the video below to learn which variety took home the top prize! Following that, you can learn which new varieties made the cut as finalists for the Industry’s Choice Award. These finalists were selected by a committee of industry members who, in a normal year, would have seen these varieties up-close during California Spring Trials, but this year had to rely on videos, discussions with breeders, and their own trial experiences. This year’s committee consisted of participants from Metrolina Greenhouses, Welby Gardens, Mast Young Plants, Raker-Roberta’s, and Greenhouse Grower Editor Janeen Wright and Contributing Editor Allan Armitage. Find out on Aug. 5 who the overall winner is of the Industry’s Choice award.

Special thanks to WestRock for sponsoring these awards and making this program possible.