With 3,000 miles between them — and not much precedent behind the wheel — Stephen Dellaporta, in New Haven, CT, and Tom Burchell, in Oakdale, CA, began a gene-editing partnership in 2019. Their destination: creation of the first Nonpareil almond that is self-compatible and pollen cross compatible with any other almond variety.
“When Tom and I got started on this project, even though there had been enormous activity and investment by a number of people, nobody had regenerated Nonpareil in tissue culture. It hadn’t been done,” Dellaporta, the founder of agricultural genomics company Verinomics, says. “We had our hands full, Tom and I.”
Which says a lot about the task at hand…