Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Wine science innovation award

Matt Gilliham was the recipient of the Viticulture & Oenology 2012 Science and Innovation Award for Young People in Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry awarded by the Commonwealth Government and sponsored by the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation.

The award will fund a project that will map the genetic make-up of a grapevine rootstock that is vitally important to the wine industry using next generation sequencing. By mapping the genome it will provide the first step in identifying the genes that confer the favourable traits of rootstocks such as phylloxera and nematode resistance, and drought and salinity tolerance. This will also allow the identification of markers for these traits and the acceleration of rootstock breeding programs.

The project will be carried out in collaboration with researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology (Prof. Jim Whelan and Dr Estelle Giraud) and the University of Verona, Italy (Profs. Mario Pezzotti & Massimo Delledone, Dr. Alberto Ferrarini). The team based at the Waite Campus includes Sam Henderson, a graduate student in the lab, and Rob and Mandy Walker at CSIRO Plant Industry.

Here are links with additional information.

Waite Research Institute
University of Adelaide
ABC Radio - audio coming soon