Mike Uchneat is G2's General Manager, and one of the two people with an ownership interest in G2.
Mike grew up in Sunderland, MA, just north of Amherst in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. As a young man, Mike worked on the family farm growing everything from corn and cole crops to strawberries and strawflowers. Along with the vegetables, Mike's family had a small greenhouse operation focusing on spring annuals.
When it came time for college, Mike came to central PA as an engineering student at Penn State, but soon returned to his roots in horticulture. He graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in horticulture in 1990, and then immediately went to work with Dr. Todd Wehner at NC State, working on disease resistance in cucumbers for his M.S.
Mike returned to Penn State in 1993 to pursue his PhD with Dr. Richard (Dick) Craig on botrytis resistance in Pelargonium. It was at Penn State that Mike met Rick Grazzini, his business partner in G2.
After graduation, Mike was hired by Pan American Seeds (a Ball Horticulture division) as a plant breeder. Mike worked on both seed- and vegetatively-propagated flowers during his tenure with Ball. Mike was deeply involved in the Wave petunia project, and won multiple internal awards for his contributions to the Easy Wave petunia series. Mike bred the Solstice and Snapshot snapdragon series and was involved in the commercialization of Dragon Wing begonia. Products developed by Mike include many of the Fiesta double impatiens (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=in%2Fuchneat%0D%0A&d=PTXT ).
In addition to being an active breeder, Mike was Station Manager for the Elburn, IL research facility and was responsible for mentoring many of the newly hired plant breeders and breeding technicians that worked at Elburn.
Mike and Rick's grad school daydreams of "starting a breeding company someday" became a possibility in 2006 when Rick sold his former contract research business. GardenGenetics became a reality in January, 2007.
In addition to being GM of G2, Mike maintains active breeding programs, both contract and proprietary, in more than 20 species. His broad and deep experience as a professional breeder within the ornamental plant industry prove to be valuable on a daily basis.
