Northern Grapes Project Fuels A Market For Cold-Hardy Grapes

 There’s a burgeoning market for cold-weather grapes.

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The Northern Grapes Project, funded in 2011 by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crops Research Initiative grant, has helped spawn an industry for Vitis riparia-based hybrid wine grapes adapted to colder climates.

The project is actually the result of the University of Minnesota’s breeding program, which released several cultivars over the last 20 years, and private breeder Elmer Swenson. Cultivars such as ‘Marquette,’ ‘La Crescent,’ and ‘Brianna’ have helped create a new industry for northern wineries, and researchers are now working to improve vine performance, study fruit composition and look at sensory analysis of numerous cold-climate grapes.

There’s also work being done on management practices, including disease, canopy management, training, soil and nutrition, as well as sustainable business development from individual wineries to regional agritourism, says Anne Fennell, professor in the Plant Science Department at South Dakota State University.  “There are at least 12 states involved in this project, and the participants range from social scientists to viticulturists that are conducting economic, viticultural and functional genomic types of analyses,” she notes. “We go from the soil to the genome on this project.”

More specifically, researchers are documenting vines’ performance in variable climates. They’re also characterizing the changes in fruit composition during the ripening phase and how these changes influence the chemistry quality at harvest.

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“We’re trying to find some biomarkers or other types of markers for which we can benchmark and provide good, key signatures of these cultivars,” Fennell says.

She is involved specifically with gene expression analysis as it relates to evaluating cultivar performance under various climates, as well as fruit composition during ripening.

Grapes are being tested in 15 locations throughout North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The primary focus is on ‘Frontenac,’ ‘Marquette,’ ‘La Crescent’, ‘Frontenac Gris’, ‘Brianna,’ and ‘St. Croix.’

Fennell says some of these varieties are already being grown in other areas of the country and even outside the U.S. “We now have wineries in every state, and there are a lot of them that are based on V. vinifera cultivars,” she says. “The cold climate cultivars have resulted in new wineries for states that have more challenging growing conditions, and this spawned a new industry that is contributing to the local economy.”

And this is just the beginning. “It’s an ongoing process,” she adds. “You will continue to see not only the cultivars that have been used in this project, but you’re going to see new ones coming along, as well.”

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