New breeding techniques could create opportunities to develop wine yeast that help producers achieve specific winemaking outcomes, such as reducing hydrogen sulfide formation, lowering sulfur dioxide requirements, or creating distinctive fermentation profiles. They may also enable the production of highly concentrated flavour or aroma parcels that could be used strategically in blending to build complexity or target particular wine styles.
Gene editing and synthetic biology are among the approaches being explored to develop these traits in ways that may be difficult or time-consuming to achieve through conventional yeast breeding.
The New Breeding Techniques project is investigating what would be required to move these technologies from technical capability towards practical use in the Australian wine sector. This includes not only whether useful strains can be developed, but also the regulatory, market-access, supply-chain, financial and industry acceptance issues that will determine whether they can ultimately be used commercially.
Progress to date
Stage 1 has focused on understanding the pathway from technical development through to potential industry use.
Work has included market research with winemakers and winery decision makers, development of industry communication materials, mapping of supply-chain roles and documentation requirements, consultation with commercial yeast suppliers, assessment of regulatory pathways and development of preliminary cost and commercial models.
The project has also explored winemaker attitudes towards gene-edited wine yeast through an industry questionnaire and follow-up focus groups. Participants initially showed strong interest in a yeast offering benefits such as reduced sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide production. However, willingness to trial the yeast decreased when its use of gene editing and potential export-market implications were introduced.
Follow-up discussions highlighted the importance of clear performance benefits, regulatory and export-market certainty, cost and potential impacts on business reputation when considering adoption.
This demonstrated that technical performance alone is unlikely to determine adoption. Regulatory clarity, access to export markets, business reputation, cost and confidence in the supply chain are also important considerations.
Stage 1 has considered both gene-editing approaches, including SDN-1 gene editing, and SDN-2 synthetic biology. The work indicates that SDN-1 may provide the more practical near-term pathway for further development, while synthetic biology is associated with greater regulatory complexity.
The principal outstanding activity is to translate the regulatory assessment into a representative draft FSANZ pathway, to better understand the information and evidence that would be required if a future gene-edited wine yeast were progressed towards commercial use.
What’s next?
The immediate focus is to complete the draft FSANZ regulatory work using a representative gene-edited wine yeast as a case study. This will test how the current regulatory framework would apply in practice and identify the evidence, documentation and data that would likely be required to support a future application.
Once this work is complete, the Stage 1 evidence can be considered as a whole, including the technical opportunity, industry attitudes, supply-chain requirements, costs, regulatory requirements and potential market-access constraints.
This will provide a basis for a broader industry discussion about how information on new breeding technologies should be communicated to the sector, who is best placed to provide and maintain that information, and what guidance winemakers and suppliers will need as the regulatory and market environment continues to evolve.
Resources
Further information and resources will be added as the project progresses, including relevant project documents, and research outcomes.