Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme

Bragato Research Institute's Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme will develop new variants of New Zealand’s premier wine varietal, Sauvignon Blanc, to make the wine industry both more resilient and more sustainable.
Most of New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc vines are of the same variant. This means that 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.
BRI has designed an accelerated 7-year research programme that will apply the latest genome sequencing technology, after using established tissue culture techniques. This will allow BRI to create up to 20,000 entirely new variants of contemporary New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and then screen them to identify plants that exhibit the most useful traits selected by the wine industry.
The programme’s partners will invest $18.7 million over seven years, making this the industry’s largest research project ever. The government, through the Ministry for Primary Industries, is investing $7.5 million, NZW up to $6 million in levy funds, plus cash and in-kind contributions of $5.2 million directly from participating New Zealand wine companies.
Find out more: bri.co.nz/2021...