You started your extension job with the Finger Lakes Grape program after several years as a research associate in Entomology. What was your biggest surprise when you started in extension?
My first thought was “what am I doing here?” I may know a lot about grape insects, but I don’t know much about grapevine pruning, training systems, nutrition, disease management or any other growing practices. And I’m going to be telling folks who have been growing grapes for generations what they should be doing? I don’t know how to grow grapes! But as I got involved in on-farm projects early on, I realized that I wasn’t expected to know everything. What I did know was how to run vineyard research trials – to establish different treatments, collect data, and write about it for the industry. This led me to participate in field trial projects and surveys involving ‘millerandage’, boron nutrition, atypical white wine aging, winter injury, leafroll, shoot thinning, variety evaluation – among many others. I worked with many grower cooperators on these projects – and I found that growers valued these projects and the data and insights they provided.
What are the characteristics of research projects you feel are most useful to the industry?
Both short-term applied practical trials and longer-term more basic research are important. Disease and insect management ‘spray trials’ are foundational. During the growing season, pest management is foremost in grower’s minds. They rely on our information to make informed decisions about what to use and when to manage diseases and insects. But longer-term more basic research also provides benefits that are not immediately apparent – but bear fruit later on.
A classic example is the research David Gadoury did in the 90s defining when powdery mildew spores were capable of infecting grape berries. He bagged clusters weekly to isolate them from field sources of infection, sprayed them with spore suspensions, and measured the resulting infections. He found that ‘chardonnay’ clusters became resistant to infection about 5-6 weeks after bloom. This provided a well-defined ‘window’ for spray programs (prebloom to 2nd postbloom) that allowed growers to better target powdery mildew sprays (see Appellation Cornell article “Climate, Duration of Bloom, and the Window of Risk for Grapevine Diseases.”)
Another example is Gavin Sacks and Justine Vanden Heuvel’s work on methoxypyrazines (MPs) (associated with ‘bell pepper’ unripe, vegetal aromas in red wines) production and metabolism (see Appellation Cornell article “Cornell Researchers Tackle Green Flavors in Red Wines”) . Again weekly MP sampling by Sacks and a leaf-removal timing trial by Vanden Heuvel showed the importance of early cluster-zone exposure to limit production of MPs and reduce undesirable MP flavors.
Finally, cheap DNA sequencing data has – in the past 10 years – allowed grape breeders to identify genetic markers associated with powdery mildew and downy mildew resistance. They have found at least 10 powdery mildew and 27 downy mildew markers (see figure below) that are associated with resistance (See Appellation Cornell article “The Core Grape Genome and Cheap DNA Sequencing: A New Roadmap for Grape Breeders”). For the first time, breeders such as Bruce Reisch can determine which seedlings have which resistance genes – and select those with multiple resistance genes or discard more seedlings before planting them out in the vineyard. This is a huge jump in efficiency – and will result in better, disease-resistant varieties over the next 20 years and beyond.