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\n By\u00a0
\n Smriti Daniel<\/a>
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\n 25 July 2025
\n 5 min read \n<\/p>\n
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Key points
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\n Dr Christine B\u00f6ttcher is focused on developing disease-resistant grapevines, helping reduce chemical use and improving sustainability in Australian viticulture.
\n Her team\u2019s work targets major threats like powdery mildew, using new breeding techniques to strengthen natural plant defences without compromising wine quality.
\n Backed by decades of CSIRO expertise and close collaboration with Wine Australia, Christine\u2019s research is building a foundation for the next generation of resilient grapevines.
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Growing up in Germany, a young Christine B\u00f6ttcher never met a creepy crawly she didn\u2019t like. Tadpoles, insects and lizards were all invited home, where she kept them in an array of jars and boxes. Christine caught mosquitoes and flies to feed her guests and kept extensive notes on their habits and preferences. She was certain zoology was her path.<\/p>\n
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\n ![\"Christine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Christine.jpg\")
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\n Dr Christine B\u00f6ttcher wants to better understand grapevine immunity \u2014 supporting the industry with science that helps keep vines healthy and yields strong.
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So, no one is more surprised than Christine herself that she grew up to be a plant physiologist. It took the right science class \u2013 and a particularly inspiring professor \u2013 to discover that plants were as dynamic, interesting and active as any animal she\u2019d ever met.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned that plants use compounds to fight pests and even each other \u2013 I came to understand that they were just trying to survive and could do really interesting things to achieve that,\u201d Christine said.<\/p>\n
From creepy crawlies to plant defence<\/p>\n
Plants are masters of chemical defence. They can\u2019t run, so they fight back with toxins, signalling compounds, and sometimes by sacrificing infected cells to stop invaders from spreading.<\/p>\n
At the heart of these responses are plant hormones \u2013 fast-moving chemical signals that help plants coordinate when to grow, when to shut down and when to defend. Christine spent her PhD at Ruhr-Universit\u00e4t Bochum in Germany studying these defence pathways in a small mustard plant called Arabidopsis.<\/p>\n
She studied how plants elicit responses to threats like insect attacks, sometimes within seconds. More than just fighting the local attack, plants trigger systemic responses that can flood their remaining leaves with poisons capable of deterring or even killing attackers. They also communicate with each other, releasing hormonal signals into the air that warn nearby kin about the invader.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly fast cascade of signals that involves several steps and different locations in the plant. It\u2019s very rapid and quite amazing,\u201d Christine said.<\/p>\n
Christine was fascinated by what she was discovering, but while the work was academically rigorous, it didn\u2019t have the real-world impact she wanted to deliver.<\/p>\n
From lab to vineyard<\/p>\n
The answer came when she joined CSIRO as a research scientist in Adelaide. The role was to be her first real encounter with grapevines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to it as a complete novice. I had no idea about the industry, or about the complicated quirks these plants have.”<\/p>\n
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\n ![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/grapes.jpg\")
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Christine had wanted to get out of the lab, and now she well and truly was out in the field. Grapevines, it turned out, grow well in glasshouses but don\u2019t flower and fruit. Unlike the little Arabidopsis, any work with grapevines often took a whole year, or longer if you consider the need to replicate an experiment at least three times.<\/p>\n
Though the pace was slower, Christine loved how closely she was working with and responding to the concerns of the industry. She met growers who were struggling with the effects of climate change on their vineyards. For example, the ripening windows of different grapevine cultivars were coming closer together, causing logistical headaches for wineries, which had traditionally relied on staggered harvests. Christine absorbed it all and set out looking for solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe grapevine is a complex plant,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s perennial, woody, and carries memory from season to season. That makes it hard to manipulate, but it also makes it fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n
A powdery problem<\/p>\n
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\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Powdery-mildew.jpg\")
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\n Powdery mildew is a major concern for grape growers, affecting fruit quality and yield.
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\n \u00a9\u00a0
\nCC BY Sandy Wolkenberg \/ iNaturalist
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Centuries ago, grapevines have been selectively bred to produce good wine \u2013 not necessarily to withstand disease. That has left many varieties vulnerable, particularly to fungal pathogens. One of the most persistent and destructive is powdery mildew<\/a>, a fungus that cloaks leaves, shoots and fruit in a chalky white film. It weakens the plant, interferes with ripening, and can render whole harvests unusable.<\/p>\n Powdery mildew is so common in Australian vineyards that many growers apply fungicides every seven to 10 days during the growing season \u2013 a costly, labour-intensive practice that\u2019s become more about prevention than cure. Even one missed spray can mean an outbreak.<\/p>\n The spores are remarkably resilient. If an infected leaf drops to the ground, the spores can lie dormant through the off-season, waiting in the leaf litter until conditions turn warm and humid again. And controlling it isn\u2019t just a matter of diligence. A careful grower can do everything right \u2013 but if their neighbour misses a spray, spores can drift across property lines on the breeze, reigniting infection.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s relentless,\u201d Christine said. \u201cAnd current fungicide use is costly and not sustainable.”<\/p>\n Her team is working to shift that equation \u2013 by helping the plant itself fight back.<\/p>\n
Building a resilient industry<\/p>\n
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\n ![\"Christine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Christine-with-members-of-her-team-at-Waite.JPG\")
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\n Christine (fourth from left) with a few members of her research team at CSIRO\u2019s Waite campus in 2024.
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![\"Christine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Christine-1.jpg\")