Riverina centre features in new wine research

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production was launched at the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus this week.

The ARC Training Centre’s research will focus on defining Australian wines’ unique flavours, making vines more robust, defeating disease and introducing more innovation to winemaking.

It will operate from two nodes – the lead node at the University of Adelaide and a second node at the NWGIC in Wagga Wagga.

The NWGIC, an alliance between Charles Sturt University (CSU), the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and the NSW Wine Industry Association, will coordinate three projects as part of the new Centre.

NWGIC Director Professor Leigh Schmidtke said, “We are very pleased to be part of the new ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production and look forward to contributing research expertise and assist in training a new generation of grape and wine scientists.

“The node at the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre (NWGIC) will include developing rapid methods of analysis to provide tools to evaluate grape quality prior to harvest, developing strategies to improve wine shelf-life and improving our understanding of the transport of plant signals in the coordination of berry maturation.”

The ARC Training Centre for Innovative Wine is fostering close partnerships between university-based researchers and research end-users to provide innovative research and training opportunities that are industry focused.

It’s being led by the University of Adelaide with partner university CSU; and 12 industry partner organisations: NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), VA Filtration, CSIRO, Pernod Ricard Winemakers, Coonawarra Grape and Wine Inc., Australian Genome Research Facility, Australian Wine Research Institute, E&J Gallo, Chalmers Wines, Wine Australia, Availer and Lallemand Australia.