Grant: Engage Grants Program

Wine grapes are a natural source of resveratrol and a variety of related molecules with health benefits. One of the main groups of such molecules is called stilbenes. These beneficial molecules are produced primarily in grape skins. Over the course of the fall season there is an accumulation of stilbenes in grapes. In addition, researchers have shown that grapes can be stimulated post-harvest to produce even more of these molecules by exposing the grapes to UV light. Grape skins are a waste product in ice wine production. Not only is there no value currently associated with the grape skins, but it is also expensive to expose of them. Given that the skins are probably the best natural source of stilbenes, we propose to extract value from the grape skin waste product by extracting the stilbenes from them. Starting with fall harvest ice wine grapes, we will use a protocol of repeated UV stimulation to enhance production of stilbenes. We will then separate skins from the grape pulp. Grape pulp can be used in wine production. Here we will focus on developing a method to maximally extract stilbenes from the skins. We will then verify the biological activities of the extracted stilbenes. We expect this work to lead to a new product (or line of products) from ice wine grapes, such that the wine-producing grape pulp is not adversely affected (indeed, it will also be stilbene-enhanced) and significant value is captured from the skins, which are currently a waste product. This will in turn lead to new jobs in processing, packaging and selling our new stilbene-rich products from ice wine grapes.