The Vidalia onion is a registered trademark of the state of Georgia. It is a unique product, one that can only be grown in a small region of southeast Georgia.

The economic impact is hard to measure — these jobs can’t be exported — but it is highly significant up- and downstream in the 20–county area where Vidalia onions are grown.

So it makes sense the state and the growers who produce the crop would go to great lengths to protect and make it better. Enter the University of Georgia Vidalia Onion & Vegetable Research Center, located on between Reidsville and Lyons in Toombs County, GA, the heart of the Vidalia region.

The center opened in 1999 and features five buildings on three acres owned by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences and two, 11-acre tracts for research and crop development leased from the Georgia Forestry Commission.

While the main focus of the center is the Vidalia onion, there’s also work going on in other areas, like corn, squash, cucumbers, blackberries, strawberries, carrots, Brassica crops, garlic, shallots and artichokes. The center recently developed a new pumpkin variety that will let south Georgia farmers grow pumpkins commercially for the first time.

“The state forestry commission owned this old seedling nursery, which is where we are now, and some of the local officials knew about it being there and knew it was not being utilized to full effect,” said UGA Vidalia Onion Area Agent and Coordinator for the research center Cliff Riner.

A deal was made and the center opened. Growers have had nothing but rave reviews ever since.

“The Vidalia onion industry relies heavily on the University of Georgia — they’re very instrumental in variety testing, disease testing and basically just driving a better product to the consumer,” said John Shuman of Shuman Produce Inc. in Reidsville, GA. “Hats off to Cliff Riner, they’re just invaluable to the industry and the Vidalia Onion Committee has driven a lot of money to UGA and that’s basically the way the growers in the industry come together to support those efforts. They help everybody be better — it’s about a better consumer experience, which benefits the whole tree.”

Part of the center’s mission is to trial new varieties of Vidalia onions. Some are being tested to come on earlier than the traditional late April start date to the season. Some are designed to stretch beyond the current harvest window, which winds up in late May. Others potentially offer better flavor, better shelf life – the research center is looking to design the perfect Vidalia variety for each segment of the season.

“We have 26 approved varieties and some 50 varieties under development right now and all this research is being led by the University of Georgia,” Shuman said. “They’re here to help us drive a better product to the consumer.”

There are currently 18 different trials focusing just on Vidalia onions underway at the center “so we’ve got to be pretty meticulous on record-keeping,” Riner said.

Another area getting a lot of attention is labor — or the lack of it.

Riner himself is in an enviable position in that regard. An arrangement with the state prison in nearby Reidsville, GA, provides a steady supply of volunteer labor for the painstaking work involved in hand-trialing any crop.

Current projects are looking at direct seeding (almost all Vidalia onions come from seedlings that are transplanted to fields by hand by the tens of thousands in November and December) and mechanical harvesting, “and we’ve gotten to the point where some of these could be adopted with the need for adoption — the growers are not really there yet, they’re heavily invested in the H2A program so it’s hard to change with a snap of your fingers,” Riner said.

But when the demand comes on, the center will be ready.

The nearby labor force “is a blessing, the prison is right next door, three miles from our facility, so having hand labor at minimal cost let us do squash trials, watermelon, onions, tomatoes, anything that would ordinarily use a lot of hand labor,” Riner said. When it comes to procuring local labor, “We’re facing the same battles the growers face at that point — if it wasn’t for the prison labor supply there are a lot of things we wouldn’t be able to do. The inmates who are on our detail ask to be on this detail and it’s the cream of the crop — we’ve actually had a couple who got out and have gone to work in some form in the produce industry, in a packing shed, driving a tractor — so in recent years we have seen some of the rehabilitation component come into effect and that’s rewarding.”

Riner feels fortunate to be in a position where research is acknowledged and appreciated. And the research center provides maximum return on growers’ investments.

“I see a lot of potential in some things that we can hopefully get to market in the next couple of years. These are some of the best farmers there are, they’ll do a lot of the research for you. As good as our product is, we’ve got a lot of potential to make it even better,” Riner said.