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 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 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 breeding mildew resistance into elite vines gives future grapevines a genetic advantage to withstand 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 & Sustainability Officer at Treasury Wine Estates, Mr Kerrin Petty, said the global wine industry faced significant challenges managing grapevine disease pressure sustainably while managing the increasingly variable growing conditions created by the changing climate.
“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 Mr 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 will likely lead to additional sustainability benefits including lower carbon emissions from less frequent use of diesel-powered tractors in vineyards.
The project demonstrates how science innovation can be used to bolster adaptation to a changing climate and manage disease pressure, providing knowledge that benefits the wider Australian wine sector to become more sustainable into the future.
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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About the Treasury Wine Estates - CSIRO partnership
Since the 1990s, Wine Australia has co-invested with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, to breed new grapevine varieties with improved resistance to powdery mildew and downy mildew. These varieties significantly reduce the need for fungicide application, lowering chemical use in the vineyard, reducing the cost of production and crop loss, lowering vineyard emissions and improving sustainability in the Australian wine sector.
Two brands in the Treasury Wine Estates portfolio – Wynns Coonawarra Estate and Penfolds – have been involved in the program, building on existing in-house breeding programs that have been underway since the 1990s. Superior quality vines have been propagated from material selected the best vines from heritage vineyards in South Australia’s Coonawarra and Barossa Valley regions. In 2022, Treasury Wine Estates entered a partnership with CSIRO where the Cabernet Sauvignon vines from both wine regions were bred with the CSIRO vine material, giving them robust resistance to powdery and downy mildew.
The performance of the progeny vines from this breeding will be monitored in the vineyard. Small batch winemaking trials will determine the best vines and will be used to cultivate new plantings.