Validation and scale-up of a national smoke taint prediction service for the Australian wine industry

Summary

Objective

This is the first year of a minimum two-year project to ensure that Wine Industry Smoke Detectors (WISDs) are fully validated as a tool for management of smoke taint risk, and ready for use by a large cross-section of the wine industry in bushfire-prone regions of Australia. Even though the network has been developed to an advanced stage (prototype hardware, software, phone App and website), the detectors have only been available to growers in North-East Victoria and to a limited extent to Coonawarra, SA. There has not yet been a chance to fully validate the loggers in a bushfire , due to La Niña climatic conditions in Australia over the last two seasons. In addition, the VESDA® reference network is no longer being supported, and the infrastructure grant funding which provided the WISD network in NE Victoria did not include provision for their operation beyond 30 June 2022. Without validation, the industry is yet to realise the full benefit of the technology as a decision tool for management of smoke taint and remains at risk of significant financial losses from smoke events.

In addition to the 17 new VESDA®s being built and developed for the automated national reference network, the project will also facilitate further development of the WISD hardware and limited deployment beyond the current network, in collaboration with a commercial partner. The communication capacity and hardware of the 100 existing WISDs will be upgraded by reprogramming all loggers and changing internal modems and SIM cards where required. This will make them cheaper to operate on a subscription model, allow greater flexibility for utilising new international communication technology and increase their appeal and adoption for future commercialisation.

Background

Smoke from bushfires can have a devastating impact on the Australian wine industry. Losses arise from the inability to market grapes from smoke-affected areas or grapes being downgraded in quality due to the risk of smoke taint. In 2020, catastrophic bushfires on the east coast of Australia cost the industry an estimated $500 million in lost wine production because of likely smoke taint. In addition, many growers dropped grapes due to insufficient data and uncertainty around potential taint, and it is estimated that over one third of the discarded grapes could have been made into saleable wine.

In response, La Trobe University has developed Wine Industry Smoke Detectors (WISDs) and deployed them as a world-first network of 100 loggers throughout the wine regions of North-East Victoria. During this time, WISDs were benchmarked against a network of seven VESDA®s (Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus) across Victoria to ensure the accuracy of their output. Smoke measurements from the WISDs are being linked to a real time smoke taint risk predictor which is based on over 10 years of research on the effect of smoke on grape and wine chemistry. It allows growers to make informed decisions about the likelihood of taint in grapes and wine, not only from bushfires but also from stubble burns, controlled burns or any wood fire smoke. The system serves as a prototype which can be rolled out globally wherever smoke is a threat.

Sector benefits

This project will be a significant step towards improving the profitability and resilience of the Australian wine industry in the face of increasing bushfire incidence in the future. Providing accurate prediction of when grapes are at risk from smoke taint enables growers and winemakers to make early strategic decisions on vineyard management or winemaking practices to reduce the impact of smoke or to confidently avoid winemaking altogether. Having results in real time greatly reduces stress for growers and winemakers and allows them to proceed with vineyard inputs, to market their grapes and produce wine with confidence. Case studies developed from this project will allow growers and winemakers to evaluate fully the outcome from a smoke event and the wine produced from affected areas.