Page 61 - Grapevine May-June 2019

Around The Vineyard

planting certain genotypes to avoid loss of pro- tion requirements. Generally, quarantine is done
duction. It is expected that we will learn more at facilities owned by the importing party as neither
about this disorder as more research is published SENASA or SAG, the National sanitary authorities in
on this topic. To date, surveys in both Argentine each of the countries have the space to complete
and Chilean vineyards were not able to detect the quarantine in their facilities.
Grapevine red blotch virus (GRBV). The most likely
reason for the lack of GRBV in Argentina and Chile It is my hope that, with time, future changes will
is that these countries have historically imported include the availability of certified pathogen free
grapevines from Europe and the virus so far has not tested and true-to-type scion and rootstock plant-
been reported in EU vineyards. ing material. Only with clean planting grapevine
material these important wine grape growing areas
None of these South American will see an improvement of the health and longevi-
Countries have a Grapevine ty of their vineyards.
Clean Planting Certification Program
Judit Monis, Ph.D. provides specialized services
Grape growers and winemakers are aware of to help growers, vineyard managers, and nursery
the detrimental effect of grapevine pathogens personnel avoid the propagation and transmission
and would prefer to purchase and plant certified of disease caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses in
grapevines. Unfortunately, neither Argentina or their vineyard blocks. Judit (based in California) is
Chile have a current certification program. In other fluent in Spanish and is available to consult in all
words, certified pathogen free vines (scion or root- wine grape growing regions of the word. Please
stock varieties) are not available. This is not com- visit juditmonis.com for information or contact
pletely true, as I learned that Argentina has one juditmonis@yahoo.com to request a consulting
certified Malbec clone available. However, there is session at your vineyard.
no use of having a certified scion if it is to be graft-
ed onto a non-certified rootstock. Consequently,
most nurseries and growers are grafting non-certi-
fied scion and rootstock varieties. In Argentine the
grapevine certification program is going through
administrative revision. The current law requires
that all mother plants are tested every year using
the woody indexing method. However, this is not
practical as the results of this test are obtained
two years after starting the index. The proposed
changes include the application of molecular (PCR,
ELISA) instead of biological testing (index) to detect
viruses in the foundation and nursery increase
blocks. In Chile, supported by public funding a virus
tested germplasm collection is being preserved. It
is expected that the material will become available
to interested nurseries that could multiply and dis-
tribute the material for planting new healthy vine-
yards.

In both countries, the available planting material
produced at the nurseries is not sufficient to fulfill
the demand of the industry. Therefore, grafted
vines can also be imported from “approved” nurs-
eries primarily from Europe (France and Italy) and
must pass the government quarantine and sanita-
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