Thursday, November 23, 2017

Genetically modifying grapevines

Image result for australian winegrapes
Genes in grapevine roots have expressed a limit on sodium.  A team from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Energy Biology were the ones to find and explore this occurrence in grapevines.  This study is important to wine makers because berries that have too much sodium are not good to make wine with.  This will have many owners of vineyard lose money because people will not come and pick the grapes for the wine, resulting in a lose of income.  More salt in grapevines will hurt the grapes, and give them an unpleasant taste when turned into wine.  Low levels of sodium in grape have been known to give off a better taste.  Dr. Jake Dunlevy from CSIRO found a specific gene that helps grapes resist the intake of sodium from their shoots.  This in turn will help them start to genetically modify these grapevines into breeding them with sodium tolerant rootstocks.  This all can be done with it is still a seed.  This saves the grapevines from having to be measured of their salt while they are growing.  Researches from all over are trying to genetically modify the DNA of grapevines now.  Places such as the United States and Europe have always had wine grapes grown there.  Australia and other places now have better options to help grow wine grapes, by supporting a breeding program.  This will have them combining the beneficial genes in grapevines to produce the best kind.  They will also be bred to perfectly serve in the Australian environment.  Doing this will help save Australia a lot of money because the level of salt in grapevines has cost about $1 billion dollars for Australia agriculture.  Genetically modifying and breeding grapevines will overall improve the taste of Australian wine, and some them money on agriculture.

https://www.winesandvines.com/features/article/49785/The-Dangers-Of-Soil-Salinity
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171123131202.htm

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