Grant: Engage Grants Program

Grape is the most widely grown fruit crop in the world. Ontario is the major producer of grapes and wines inCanada. The grape and wine industry serves as a corner stone for Ontario's economy. Unfortunately, grapes areseverely afflicted by infectious diseases. Viruses constitute a group of highly damaging pathogens of grapesand are responsible for considerable losses due to reduced yield and quality of grape and wine products, as wellas shortened lifespan of vineyards. Located in Jordan Station in the Niagara Peninsular, Creekside EstateWinery is a medium-sized company, producing only VQA wines made purely from grapes produced inOntario. Creekside Winery is the pioneer in experimenting premium Syrah wines, including the award winningbrand name of ""Broken Press"". The unique microclimate in the Niagara Peninsular allows the production ofpremium quality Syrah grapes and wines. Unfortunately, Syrah vines growing in the Creekside estate vineyardsand those of many grape growers are severely afflicted by diseases believed to be caused by viruses. Viralinfections severely affected the productivity of Syrah vineyards as a result of reduced yield and quality ofgrapes and the wine products. Moreover, the diseased vines easily succumb to damage caused by freezingtemperatures during the harsh winters. In this collaborative project, we will employ the powerful, cutting edgetechnology, next generation sequencing (also known as deep sequencing), to discover all viruses that arepresent in these diseased Syrah vines. Subsequently, we will use reverse transcription-polymerase chainreaction (RT-PCR), cloning and DNA sequencing to determine the genetic diversity of major viruses that willbe identified through deep sequencing. This in turn will shed lights on the types viruses and viral strains thatare associated with Syrah decline. We will then establish RT-PCR based methodologies for the validation ofthese identified viruses in the Syrah grapes. Such methodologies will also be highly useful in large-scalesurveys to be conducted in the future for the purpose of resolving the etiology of Syrah decline. With the highlyeffective RNA isolation technology we recently developed in a prior Engage project, we deem the objectives of