Vintage research benefits wine industry

On a wall at CSIRO Plant Industry's Merbein laboratories, is an old photo-micrograph of a grapevine floral bud. Dr Nigel Steele Scott, head of Plant Industry's horticultural research laboratories in Glen Osmond, South Australia, says it's his favourite image -- a portent of a revolution in viticulture that is still having an enormous impact on the Australian wine industry today.

Scott told the AusBiotech 2003 conference in Adelaide this week that as microscopic studies of floral-bud initiation moved from laboratory to field observations, they had led to the realisation that it was possible to mechanically prune and harvest grapes while maintaining floral development and fruitfulness.

"Most recently, they have shown that we can mechanically thin developing bunches to maximise fruit quality," he said. "And as commercial vineyards begin to take up this practice, we're developing an understanding of gene expression during flowering in vines, by studying homologues to flowering genes in Arabidopsis."

Using DNA microarrays, CSIRO molecular geneticists are now investigating how environmental conditions -- soil, water and sunshine -- and different management regimes influence gene expression during flower and berry development.

"Our preliminary findings are remarkable -- we're finding that in a single vineyard, the same clone, grown in different soil types and under different watering regimes, exhibits dramatically different patterns of gene expression," Scott said.

"We want to know how we can consistently get them to express their genes in the way that makes the best wine."

Scott said microarray technology was beginning to work out how the genes of the flavonoid-synthesis pathway collectively influence the colour (anthocyanins), flavour (flavonins) and 'feel' of wine in the mouth (tannins).

By linking these results to different management regimes, Scott said researchers would be able to recommend new agronomic practices to growers, to optimise yield and quality.

He said wine and cotton were the two horticultural industries in Australia that had benefited most from research and development -- especially strategic research.

A study in contrast

Scott said the industries were a study in contrast -- the wine industry was not interested in genetically modified (GM) vines or yeasts, but was still very interested in biotechnology. But GM cotton varieties had been integral to the cotton industry's salvation.

Scott said it was "extraordinary" that the wine industry had, until relatively recently, had regarded viticulture and oenology as separate matters, even though it was clear that the quality of wine was as much influenced by the way the grapes were grown, as the winemaker's art. "We've at last realised that we need to have integrated research and development all along the line," he said.

He and Dr Peter Hoj, Director of the Australian Wine Research Institute in Adelaide, were pushing this approach very hard.

"It's obvious that viticulture and oenology are linked, and the wine industry now understands that if it is spending a wine dollar, it may need to be spent in strategic research into viticulture," he said.

Both the wine and cotton industries once spent most of their research funds on applied research; today, about 50 per cent of their funds went into strategic research.

Strategic research had saved the cotton industry, which had been in desperate straits 25 years ago. Like the wine industry, its prosperity had been built on strong, strategic interaction between researchers from CSIRO, university and state research agencies, and the industries.

The combination of pest-resistant GM cotton varieties protected by Bt insecticide genes, and new management regimes, had allowed the industry to change the agronomic practices that had brought about resistance in pests.

"The old idea was that if one spray with a chemical pesticide was good, two was better and 10 would give spectacular results, but that was a recipe for resistance."

The introduction of the new twin-gene Bollgard 2 varieties this year would reduce spraying to "very low levels indeed", as well as allowing the area of Bt-protected GM varieties to be increased to more than 80 per cent of the national crop within a few seasons, compared to only 30 per cent today.

"Growers now must sign an agreement that they will manage their crop to avoid resistance. For a first time, we have a handle on the agronomic practices that caused the problem," Scott said.

"If we had had that sort of information when doctors began using penicillin more than half a century ago, we mightn't have such problems with antibiotic resistance today."

Scott said the macadamia industry was the only other horticultural industry in Australia that was investing in strategic research into breeding and crop management.

The stone and pome fruit industries were still locked into short-term 'on-my-farm-please' research, as was the vegetable industry, the largest and most diverse of Australia's horticultural industries.

"They're still unable to come together and work out what they have in common, so that they can fund strategic research. Their focus is still on applied research."

Scott said Australia's wine industry had got it right -- even Europe's wine industry had yet to understand the importance of scientists getting out of the laboratory and interacting with the industry to develop an integrated, strategic research program. "It's still just a whole bunch of scientists having fun.'