Serving Sauvignon

Growing greater diversity in our vines

SOPHIE PREECE

NEW ZEALAND’S largest ever wine research programme is using tough love to safeguard the future of Sauvignon Blanc. “The innovation in this programme is in harnessing the natural diversity that appears when plant cells are exposed to harsh environmental conditions, and repeating this in a way that is controlled at scale, says Bragato Research Institute (BRI) principal research scientist Dr Darrell Lizamore, who is leading the new $18.7 million, seven-year Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme.

The accelerated research programme will use established tissue culture techniques to create up to 20,000 entirely new variants of contemporary New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, then use genome sequencing technology to identify plants that exhibit the most useful traits selected by the wine industry.

BRI chief executive Jeffrey Clarke says the innovative programme builds sustainability for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which provides 87% of the export revenue of New Zealand’s $1.9 billion wine industry. “Growing a huge number of vines – each very subtly different – will allow us to select traits to accommodate a changing environment, capture market opportunities, and fend off biosecurity threats.”

Most of New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc vines are of the same variant, so a new pest, disease or environmental change that affects one Sauvignon Blanc vine could affect every one of them. The programme seeks to develop new grapevines with traits such as improved yield, more tolerance of fungal attack, frost, high temperatures and drought, and which either maintain the characteristic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc wine flavour and aroma, or offer new opportunities to expand sales of novel Sauvignon Blanc styles.

“Selected new variants will have enhancements that will boost sustainability and industry resilience, while producing wines that still possess all the distinctive characteristics our local and international wine consumers have grown to love,” says Jeffrey. He announced the project in mid-December, following the signing of a new partnership investment between the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) through the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund, New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW), and more than 20 wine sector companies. MPI is investing $7.5m, and NZW up to $6m in levy funds, plus cash and in-kind contributions of $5.2m directly from participating New Zealand wine companies.

Patrick Materman was chair of Sauvignon 2019, is deputy chair of the NZW Research Advisory Committee, and is head of winegrowing at Indevin Group, which is one of two Platinum sponsors of the new programme, alongside Constellation.

He says there is “no doubt” Sauvignon Blanc has put New Zealand on the world map, with a unique style that’s garnered “huge” success. “But at the same time, we are very reliant on one variant of the one variety, which perhaps leaves us vulnerable to climate change or any biosecurity threat”, he says, also raising the challenges of powdery mildew, trunk disease and drought. “This project is really around trying to mitigate that risk.”

It could also provide options for different flavour and aroma traits, giving the industry more options should consumer trends shift, says Patrick. As New Zealand’s biggest exporter, Indevin – which recently purchased Villa Maria – has the most to lose should the current Sauvignon Blanc variant come under threat, he says. “And we have the most to benefit if this creates what we are after.”

No introduction of DNA or gene editing is involved in the programme, which was designed to make use of grapevine’s natural ability to increase its own diversity. Darrell says the technology is not being harnessed similarly for grapevines anywhere else in the world, “and this programme leverages unique New Zealand knowledge and capability developed over the past decade”.

He will be based at a newly-established research and laboratory facility built in collaboration with Lincoln University, where the technique was originally developed during his NZW/Lincoln University-funded doctoral research with Associate Professor Chris Winefield. BRI is also planning to work with Plant & Food Research, which has further researched the techniques including ways to implement them at scale, as a major partner.