Estonian University of Life Sciences Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Polli Horticultural Research Centre is a practical basis for provision of horticultural education in fruit science for the students: introducing the diversity of cultivars and fruit crops, experiments in fruit gardens, and supervision of post-graduate students, and applicants for doctor's degree.

Polli has a suitable site with characteristic soil and climate in South Estonia which belongs to one of the best region for fruit growing in the republic. The main directions of the research are the following:

• Breeding apple, (pear), plum, sweet cherry, black currant, and raspberry new cultivars; in earlier decades, the breeding of sour cherry, red currant, white currant, strawberry, and gooseberry also took place.
• Scientific research in new technologies of fruit and berry cultivating, plant protection, and organic gardening.
• Introducing new cultivars for fruit and berry production in Estonia; testing them for evaluation of their perspective for cultivating.
• Investigating new crops: sea buckthorn, edible honeysuckle, sorb.
• Breeding of apple vegetative rootstocks.
• Preserving genetic diversity and cultivars' resources of fruit and berry crops of Estonian origin.