[1][2] Over the course of his career, Meader developed over 50 new strains of plum, peach, squash, rutabaga, sweet corn, melon, watermelon, salad bean, pod bean, pepper, pumpkin, nectarine, bush cherry, kiwi fruit, persimmon, cranberry, raspberry, and blueberry.

His thesis at Rutgers was "A Method for Determining the Relative Cold Hardiness of Dormant Peach Fruit Buds".

[2] Meader's career began as a pomologist for the USDA at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station in the 1930s, where he was tasked with categorizing the traits of hybrid cultivars.

[9] This resulted in them being hybridized with other common cucumber cultivars that produced high-quality vegetables, enabling them also to increase their yield significantly by including this gynoecious trait.

In the end, the seeds Meader brought back were used to create all modern hybrid cucumbers sold around the world.

[8][10] He crossed this Korean berry with the American red raspberry and ended up with a suitable cultivar after 15 further years of development, with the desire for it to be disease and cold resistant while still retaining flavor.

[13] A Korean persimmon that Meader brought back with him was propagated on his farm in 1950 after 147 of the 150 seedlings he originally planted died from the winter cold, but one of the remaining three was successfully grown.