A significant new viticulture plot, for both scientific and demonstration purposes, is being established at East Malling Research (EMR).
The new research plot draws on a century of success at EMR in supporting global fruit production, and focuses its viticulture research and development activity on improving quality, reducing costs and helping the UK wine industry.
“The quality of UK wines has dramatically increased this last decade, and the UK viticulture sector now needs world-class science to further underpin the production of the finest quality, globally-recognised, unique wines and increase winemakers’ margins,” commented EMR’s Head of Viticulture Research, Dr Julien Lecourt. He added, “There is a huge opportunity to exploit the unique UK ‘terroir’, the combination of environmental and physical growing conditions, and establish bespoke UK vines for UK wines.”
East Malling Research (EMR) is partnering with UK vineyards to ensure that its world-class fruit science will play a significant role to further advance viticulture unique to the UK climate.
The vineyard will ensure EMR research is directly applicable to commercial vineyards and also provides an essential demonstration tool to test upstream innovative practices or novel ideas of research in viticulture.
Grape research programme at EMR is co-ordinated by Dr Julien Lecourt (ex-University of Bordeaux and INRA) and involves leading scientists from across EMR’s three research programmes:
– Resource Efficiency for Crop Production
– Genetics & Crop Improvement
– Pest & Pathogen Ecology for Sustainable Crop Management
The research programme at EMR is being established in partnership with:
– Agrii
– University of Bordeaux
– Institute of Grape and Wine Research of Bordeaux
– Pepinieres Guillaume
– Pepinieres Boriolli