family background/ Geraldine has a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and a master’s in plant biology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She finished her doctorate in horticulture at Washington State University and is now working at New Mexico State University. Her parents are Evelyn and Robert-Jean Diverres.
age/ 32
hometown/ Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
crops/ grapes
role/ viticulture extension specialist
business/ New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
How did you find your way into agriculture?
I had a very happy childhood growing up in the Canary Islands. My playground was the ocean and the beach. There is agriculture in the islands, but even though I liked biology, it was not something I thought about. I moved to Madrid, Spain, to get my bachelor’s in biology, and it was during a class of applied microbiology where we learned about beer and winemaking that I was first fascinated with the wine industry.
It was really interesting how you could use enzymes to change the wine profile. That intrigued me a lot, though at that time wine tasted like wine and I could not differentiate any subtitles in flavor. After that, I signed up for a tasting class. I was blown away by what I learned and decided this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to do research with somebody that was working with wine or viticulture.
Why learn about viticulture?
Spain is one of the greatest countries to fall in love with viticulture. It really showcases how humans adapt to the environment that we have, how to farm with the challenges that each place has.
As I traveled around to different places to collect data, I saw all the beauty in these different ways of growing grapes, and those experiences helped me decide that viticulture is the thing I love the most. This is why I want to keep learning. I was thirsty for more knowledge, and that’s how I ended up at Washington State University, where I learned how to become a scientist, too.
During my bachelor’s, I was not mature enough to understand everything that I was learning, and I don’t feel that I was a scientist after I graduated. I feel I am a scientist now. It has been an insane, beautiful adventure.
What have you learned along the way?
For instance, if you go to the north of Spain, to the region of Galicia, it’s very humid, it’s very rainy. It’s cloudy most of the time. The way they farm grapes is completely different from the way we farm grapes in the islands, where we have completely opposite problems. We have no water, we barely have soil, and this is the case of the island of Lanzarote, Spain.
Growers make hollow, conical shapes in the ground, and they plant the vines in the middle because there is no irrigation. It also serves the purpose of protecting the vines from the extreme winds that place experiences.
In Washington state, the weather is a little more extreme compared to Madrid and the region where I was doing my master’s thesis, in the sense that it’s hotter in Washington during the summer and it’s colder during the winter.
But there are a lot of similarities between Madrid and Eastern Washington. One of the areas I worked in had irrigation because the goal of growing the grapes was to make brandy.
How did that work help you at WSU?
When I was working on my master’s, the company I worked with would make white wine, but wine was not the ultimate goal. They basically wanted a sugar factory so the wine could be distilled into brandy. Because of that, they didn’t look at the wine’s flavors, aromas and complexity. The irrigation helped them produce high yields. So, we were studying whether we could increase yield by reducing water and changing the dose and the frequency.
We also had a project where we tested different rootstock/scion combinations to check if they had salinity tolerance. The research translated very well to what I was doing in Washington.
At WSU, I worked with irrigation, and I had different methods of irrigation to see if we could save water without compromising yield, and to test the effect on the wine quality. The wine analysis results are very interesting, because the wines are very different from each other. They were very distinct in their aroma profiles, even though it was the same variety grown in the same vineyard blocks, just by changing the irrigation.
What would you tell other young growers about working in research?
If you have a lot of curiosity, and if you were the kid that always wanted to learn the reason behind why things work the way they do, then science is going to be a great field for you.
My mom told me that when I was little, they gave me a doll that would cry and move her eyes, and I would not want to play with it. I wanted to tear it open and learn about the mechanisms inside. I would wonder, “Why is this doll crying if it’s not real?” I guess I always had a thirst inside me for learning how things work, right? I don’t know if that’s the reason why I wanted to become a scientist, but I’ve always wanted to give an explanation to the things that I didn’t understand. So, if you relate to that feeling, you should become a scientist.
Also, no matter what the scientific discipline is that you pursue, you must learn that it’s OK to be wrong. Science advances because people try things, and if they are proven wrong, that’s how we find the actual way of how things work. It will help you to learn how to accept failings when your data proves your hypothesis is false. Do not feel as if your work is a failure. Learn that it’s one step along a very long path of the scientific process, and your contribution is very important.
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