Rachel Jones
What does a hop researcher do?
Rachel’s work focuses on variety development. Hopsteiner’s experimental hop varieties are screened for disease resistance in her greenhouse. Experimental hops along with hundreds of additional hop genotypes are stored in vitro in Rachel’s tissue culture library. Rachel studied biology and French at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA. She’s been a part of the Hopsteiner Research and Development team since 2012.
Did you know…?
Commercial hop yards are populated with female hop plants. Rachel manages a yard of male hop plants, which have smaller, pollen-yielding flowers. The pollen that she collects each summer will produce hundreds of thousands of seeds and experimental hop varieties. Rachel loves learning languages. She grew up in the Philippines where she learned to speak Tagalog, she studied French in college, and is working on learning Spanish.
