For high-throughput growth of microbial cultures, such as yeast and bacteria, HiGro incubator combines orbital shaking, aeration and incubation in a high-capacity plate growth system. These unique features enable growth of microbial cultures in standard 96-microwell plates with up to 48 plates in parallel. This incubator system is used to grow the yeast gene-deletion mutant cell library for analysis of yeast gene functions.