A Victorian winemaker has eliminated chemicals from his grape production in a bid to stand out as global consumption continues to decline.<\/p>\n
But environmental sustainability can be challenging in the vineyard, especially when it comes to tackling plant diseases that can devastate a vintage.<\/p>\n
Sunraysia producer Justin Kassulke grows grapes that are resistant to downy and powdery mildew, which eliminates the need for chemical sprays.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Justin Kassulke says disease-resistant vines need to be commercially viable. (ABC Rural: Timu King)<\/p>\n
He first had a taste of wine made with disease-resistant grapes eight years ago at an event hosted by the CSIRO and Wine Australia.<\/p>\n
“Some of the wines, to be honest, weren’t great, but some were fantastic,” Mr Kassulke said.<\/p>\n
“I came away from that and elected to try to grow six initially \u2014 three red and three white.”<\/p>\n
The use of fungicide is a barrier for growers looking to become certified as sustainable. (Gardening Australia)<\/p>\n
The CSIRO estimates that powdery and downy mildew costs the Australian wine grape industry $140 million per year.<\/p>\n
The diseases, which reduce yield and wine quality, thrive in warm, wet conditions and are largely controlled with synthetic chemical fungicide sprays.<\/p>\n
CSIRO scientists developed the disease-resistant grapes to help the industry reduce its significant fungicide use.<\/p>\n
Mr Kassulke was glad he made the decision to try them.<\/p>\n
“It is hard to quantify how much of a saving it is for us \u2026 we could potentially cut down on equipment and staff,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cindy Healy says consumers look for products with a story behind them. (ABC Rural: Timu King)<\/p>\n
Expanding horizons<\/p>\n
Mr Kassulke’s grapes are turned into wine near Mildura by the Monak Wine Co.<\/p>\n
“Globally, people are \u2026 looking for a story behind the product and they’re looking to expand their horizons in the wine market,” owner Cindy Healy said.<\/p>\n
Ms Healy said wine made from disease-resistant grapes had been well-received in Australia and overseas.<\/p>\n
“They’re easy to be certified sustainable because no synthetic sprays are required in the vineyard,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I feel like these are real game changers for the industry as a whole.<\/p>\n
“We can remove a few costs for growers and we can put a bit of money back in their pocket.”<\/p>\n
Paul Smith says research and development project outcomes often take time to be embraced by industry. (Supplied: Wine Australia)<\/p>\n
The mildew-resistant grapes were developed through years of selective breeding by CSIRO researchers with funding from Wine Australia.<\/p>\n
Wine Australia general manager of research and innovation Paul Smith said the resistant grapes have had “great success \u2026 in terms of the performance criteria of having really sustainable performance in the vineyard”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also described the flavour profiles as “excellent”.<\/p>\n
Dr Smith said it could take years to realise the benefits of research and development projects.<\/p>\n
“[Disease resistance] was a really key trait to focus on early, but we have a lot of other traits as well that we would like to be able to build into grapevines,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There is parallel work happening around traits like resistance to salinity, surviving in higher temperatures or arid conditions.<\/p>\n
“These fungicide-resistance traits are really the tip of the spear.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Victorian winemaker has eliminated chemicals from his grape production in a bid to stand out as global…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,6080,6076,6078,6079,6077],"class_list":["post-4293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-chemical-free-wine","tag-csiro","tag-downy-and-powdery-mildew","tag-sunraysia","tag-wine-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}