In Chile, 12% of annual agricultural exports consists of bottled wines. They are sold in 150 countries for a US$ 1,900 billion total value. Besides, over US$ 15 million are destined for laboratory analysis in domestic wine production (M & IP Assessment, Genesis Partners, 2013). However, few alternatives exist for testing sampling and chemical control to improve the management conditions of the product.
In this context, researchers from Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM), Center for Genome Regulation (CRG) and Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA), created a kit for a faster identification of lactic acid bacteria in wine: FastWine. This product seeks to reduce losses because of the pollution and higher returns by making more dynamic flows office.
Unlike traditional systems, this technology is able to get in a few hours detailed information about the presence and amount of yeast at any stage of winemaking. It also recognizes the type of pathogen by using a method for molecular identification (qPCR) with probes. This system can collect enough information to make better production decisions quickly and efficiently.
The kits design is based on genomic information from isolated varieties in Chilean vineyards, which allows the detection of contaminant yeasts such as Brettanomyces and Zygosaccharomyces. The timely determination of this pollution is essential to get a wine with the desired organoleptic characteristics.
“We hope this technology supports the wine industry in two aspects at least. On the one hand, the control of pollutant yeasts that affect the quality of the final product, but also, given the specificity of the product and the technology itself, speed up stages of quality control at the time of bottling, supporting the full chain of wine production,” said CMM researcher Alejandro Maass.
For INTA researcher Rodrigo Pulgar, “the immediate FastWine‘s impact is the training of researchers with the ability to detect industrial problems, to generate appropriate solutions and to transfer this innovation to market. This development also has an impact on the University-industry relation.”
Meanwhile, the head of the Transfer Unit of the Vice Presidency of Research and Development (VID), Varinka Farren, said “this is different from the other initiatives because of the commercialization agreement between INTA, the University, and COPEC-UC Foundation. This has allowed the commercialization to several private companies with significant results in its industrial scaling up”.
FastWine is used at INTA Laboratory for Applied Genomics, where researchers developed more than six thousand trials over the past two years. It also has been already tested in San Pedro, Tarapacá and Errazúriz vineyards. Vineyards will intensify its use, by protocols to the obtaining, purity and quality of the genetic material of microorganisms.
