WRI Seminar – Dr Dilrukshi Nagahatenna

The WRI is pleased to announce that our research seminar series is BACK – although now online! Register now to join in from your office, couch – anywhere you like!

This webinar series showcases the excellent science our members, affiliates and collaborators are undertaking across the agriculture, food and wine sectors. Expand your network and find new collaborators!

Everyone is welcome – webinars are generally scheduled at 11am on Thursdays, with some exceptions. Registration is required.

Dr Dilrukshi Nagahatenna – Can dry-farmed grapevines adapt fast to future dry climates? 

WRI and School of Ag, Food and Wine

The viticulture industry is the largest horticulture industry in Australia and, in 2019, the wine sector contributed $45.4 bn to the Australian economy. However, the Australian wine industry is currently under pressure to sustain its profitability due to climate change. For instance, recent extreme drought along with heatwaves and bushfires caused 20% reduction in Australian grape production in 2020. Given that the incidence and severity of drought events are predicted to increase in the future, there is an increasing need to select and/or breed superior grapevine cultivars and clones, which could perform better in dry climates. Many recent studies have indicated that prolonged exposure of a plant to a stress event can protect them against subsequent stresses through the acquisition of a “stress memory”. However, we have a limited understanding on whether perennial crops such as grapevines, which frequently expose to recurrent drought episodes, can prime their vegetatively propagated progenies for future drought events. As the first step towards understanding this, we first investigated the long-term drought adaptability of dry-farmed (non-irrigated for over 65 years) Cabernet Sauvignon grapevines in a South Australian vineyard. Then, we exposed their vegetatively propagated progeny to two cyclical drought events in the glasshouse. In this presentation, I will discuss our results, which indicate that drought acclimation responses of dry-farmed grapevines are greatly influenced by the variation in soil depth in the vineyard. Overall, our findings imply that clonal progeny of dry-farmed grapevines have a greater ability to improve their vine performances under subsequent drought events, possibly though transgenerational stress priming.