Questions and answers
Why are you collecting vines?
There are two factors that influence how a vine grows and produces fruit: its genetics and its environment. The Bragato Research Institute’s Grapevine Improvement Programme investigates the genetic piece, to learn more about resilience and new clones naturally occurring in our vineyards.
In New Zealand, every grapevine clone we have is because someone noticed something odd growing in a vineyard – and collected it. This is the basis for this website and the database, where anyone can submit a photo of odd vines from their vineyards. Bragato Research Institute is driving the work to identify and provide vines with improved traits and resilience, enabling the protection and growth of the New Zealand wine industry for future generations.
What happens when I report an odd vine?
The record is automatically added to the New Zealand OddVine database.
These records are routinely assessed by the Grapevine Improvement team.
If the vine is particularly unusual, or may be of value to the research programme, growers will be asked to tag the vine and submit a cutting to Bragato Research Institute.
Bragato Research Institute will grow these plants under controlled conditions to observe any unique traits.
Genetic testing may be used to validate them as a novel clone.
Bragato Research Institute will engage with industry partners to trial the most promising new vines in commercial settings.
Bragato Research Institute will work with the nurseries to provide access to growers.
Who will own the new clones?
Identifying an apparently atypical vine is the first step in a long and expensive process to characterise and commercialise new clones. At every stage, the vast majority of potential candidates will be eliminated, so there is a very low likelihood of any specific submission becoming a commercial success.
Rather than rewarding the individual grower who happened to submit an ultimately successful cutting (and charging all others an additional fee), Bragato Research Institute intends to provide all growers access to the full clone collection. Our aim is to use the licensing returns from the few individual successes to financially support the industry-owned project.
We hope that helping to develop a collection of tested, commercially-ready clones that are locally-derived and particularly suited to New Zealand’s winegrowing conditions is incentive enough to tag and submit cuttings to the collection. Contributors can also be recognised in other ways, such as in the naming of a new clone.