ARC Chief Executive Officer Professor Aidan Byrne at the Centre launch with Professor Vladimir Jiranek
The $2.4m ARC Training Centre launched at the Waite earlier this week will help the Australian wine industry address key challenges such as climate warming, water limitations, changing consumer preferences and increasing production costs, while strengthening links between research, industry and education. The Centre was officially opened by the Hon Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, at the Roseworthy-Hickinbotham Wine Science Laboratory.
Supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and 12 partner organisations, the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production aims to build the knowledge and technologies that will both address these challenges and produce highly skilled graduates and postdoctoral researchers honed for working at the industry/research interface.
“We have a portfolio of 18 projects which together take a ‘grape to glass’, multi-faceted approach to tackling these key issues facing the industry,” says Professor Vladimir Jiranek, Professor of Oenology in the University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine and Director of the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production.
“We aim to underpin and enable more profitable grape-growing and winemaking while achieving the desired flavour and alcohol balance that consumers want.”
The Centre is supported by the Federal Government through the ARC’s Industrial Transformation Research Program, and the Australian Grape and Wine Authority. The partners are: The Australian Wine Research Institute, BioInnovation SA, Charles Sturt University, CSIRO Agriculture, Laffort Oenologie Australia, Lowe Wines, Memstar, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Sainsbury’s Supermarkets, South Australian Research and Development Institute, Tarac Technologies and Treasury Wine Estates Vintners.
The Centre builds on a long tradition of research and multi-agency collaboration in winemaking and viticulture at the Waite Campus. The Waite’s Wine Innovation Cluster accounts for 62% of Australia’s wine research capability and outputs.