Projects

Phylloxera is a hemipteran pest of grape vines world-wide that spread from eastern North America in the late 19th Century. In response, many wine producing varieties are grafted to native North American root stocks which are resistant to the pest. This project is concerned with investigating the evolutionary consequences of grafting on wine varieties over the past century, both in the relaxation of selection for pest resistance on the wine plant and adaptation to the grafted condition.

Metagenomic analysis of wine and associated environments faces a number of technical challenges, ranging from the extraction of DNA at low concentrations, overcoming likely DNA damage, purification of challenging inhibitors and so on.

Soil and plant associated microbes that influence plant health in many ways. In this PhD project we compare soil and plant microbiota between healthy and sick plants to learn about interactions between the protective and infective microbial agents in wine agriculture. A targeted effort will be made to find microbiological cures for known wine pests (e.g. Phyloxera). We will follow the impact of using Bio-pesticides on the microbial community using Illumina sequencing.

Lactic acid bacteria present in the winery’s environment may develop spontaneously in wine during or after the alcoholic fermentation and perform the malolactic fermentation (MLF), which improves the overall wine quality. Oenococcus oeni is the best-adapted species and often the only one detected during MLF. Several strains are present simultaneously in wine and the same strains may be detected in the same winery during several consecutive years. Population studies suggest that O.

The combination of high acidity and ethanol content makes the post fermentation, wine environment highly selective with only very few species of yeast and (mainly) lactic acid bacteria (LAB) able to interact with the medium. However post vinification microbial processes (malo-lactic fermentation and, where it occurs, spoilage) can profoundly effect the chemical composition of wine that can impact on the quality of the final product.

Data collected within the different MICROWINE projects will be plenty and complex. In order to facilitate downstream analysis of the role of microbial diversity and the functional differences of the microbial communities in wine fermentation, wine quality and wine health, this PhD project will develop new tools that will address many of the unique challenges of microbiome systems biology.