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RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Monitoring the viable grapevine microbiome to enhance the quality of wild wines

Brady L. Welsh A * , Raphael Eisenhofer A B , Susan E. P. Bastian C and Stephen P. Kidd A D E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, North Terrace Campus, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.

B Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, DK-1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.

C School of Agriculture, Food & Wine, Waite Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, PMB 1, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.

D Research Centre of Infectious Disease, The University of Adelaide, North Terrace Campus, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.

E Australian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Ecology (ACARE), The University of Adelaide, North Terrace Campus, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.




Brady Welsh is a student at The University of Adelaide undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of grapevine microbiology investigating the interactions between the living grapevine microbiome and common vineyard fungicides.



Dr Raphael Eisenhofer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and an adjunct assistant lecturer at the University of Adelaide. His research focus is studying the microbiomes of native Australian mammals, though he applies his metagenomic expertise to diverse study systems.



Assoc. Prof. Susan Bastian is a qualified winemaker and has been a wine educator and researcher at the University of Adelaide for more than two decades. Broadly, her research group examines the whole wine value chain, specifically grape and wine quality; viticultural and winemaking production impacts, including the influence of wine yeasts, on wine sensory and chemical composition; and wine consumer preference.



Dr Stephen Kidd is a research group leader at the University of Adelaide. His group studies the bacterial response to environmental stress, specifically the adaptation over long periods of time and the impact on the functionality of the microorganisms. This has extended to the responses of microbial communities, such as the grapevine microbiome.

* Correspondence to: brady.welsh@adelaide.edu.au

Microbiology Australia 44(1) 13-17 https://doi.org/10.1071/MA23004
Submitted: 17 January 2023  Accepted: 26 February 2023   Published: 9 March 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the ASM. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Grapevines that are used for winemaking host a diverse range of microorganisms that make up their microbiome. The microbes that inhabit the grapevine have been used by winemakers to produce wine for centuries, although modern wine producers often rely on inoculated microorganisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In the Australian wine industry, there is a movement towards returning to the utilisation of the microbiome for wine fermentation. With the recent increase in the understanding of the role of the grapevine microbiome in grapevine health, fermentation and subsequent wine sensory traits, the microbial world offers a new level of complexity that can be harnessed for winemaking. In order to develop and maintain a desired vineyard micro-biodiversity, extensive microbial monitoring is required. Here we discuss the utilisation of a viability selection dye in order to distinguish between microorganisms that are live and associated with the host, and relic signals generated from non-living sources.

Keywords: fermentation, metagenomics, micro-biodiversity, microbiome, microbiota, wild, wine.


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