Wynns senior winemaker Sue Hodder. Image courtesy Treasury Wine Estates
New mildew-resistant and drought-resilient grapevines have been planted in South Australia’s Coonawarra wine region to help safeguard the future of Australia’s wine industry against a changing climate and disease threats.
Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) partnered to “future-proof” some of the most collected wines in the region made from old vines, with the first vines of the new progeny recently planted at Wynns Coonawarra Estate.
The new grapevines blend genetics from TWE’s heritage vines in Coonawarra and Barossa Valley, which have an enhanced climate resilience, with mildew-resistant traits developed through years of selective breeding by CSIRO, with funding from Wine Australia.
Powdery and downy mildew costs the Australian wine sector an estimated $160 million in management expenses and production losses annually.
CSIRO research scientist and project lead, Dr Paul Boss, said that breeding mildew resistance into “elite” vines provides the future grapevines with a genetic advantage against these disease-causing pathogens.
“Using traditional breeding methods, we introduced two distinct genes to the Wynns heritage vines, which give resistance to downy mildew and powdery mildew,” Dr Boss said.
“These are from CSIRO-developed breeding lines that confer robust disease resistance and other quality traits onto their progeny.
“Having resistance genes for both powdery and downy mildew makes these plants more robust as it is unlikely the pathogens can break both sources of resistance with a single mutation.”
Through many decades of exposure to climate extremes of hot, cold, wet and dry, the heritage vines from the Wynns and Penfolds vineyards have developed a natural resilience to drought, making them prime candidates for further development to enhance their tolerance to climate extremes.
Chief supply and sustainability officer at Treasury Wine Estates, Kerrin Petty, said that managing grapevine disease pressures sustainably, whilst adapting to the increasingly variable growing conditions brought on by climate change are significant challenges facing the wine industry across the globe.
“In partnering with CSIRO for this important project, we’re combining the genetics of heritage Australian vines from our renowned Wynns Coonawarra Estate and Penfolds brands with scientific research and innovation,” said Petty.
“Creating mildew resistant vines that are also able to withstand climatic variation means we’re setting up our vineyards to continue producing world-famous wine for generations to come.”
The resulting “superior” cultivars are expected to require fewer inputs, such as the application of fungicide sprays, which could lead to additional sustainability benefits including lower carbon emissions from less frequent use of diesel-powered tractors in vineyards.
The mildew-resistant grapevine breeding lines used in this project were partly funded by Australia’s grape growers and winemakers through their investment body Wine Australia with matching funding from the Australian Federal Government.
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