Obiettivo
Botrytis cinerea is a fungus that affects wine grapes and is responsible for the grey rot infection, which can strongly alter the quality of grapes and derived wine, causing: browning, destruction of flavour compounds, decrease of foaming properties, fermentation stopping. Grey rot is the largest infection of grapes in vineyards all over the world and is a major problem both for wine growers and wine producers, being very rapid and resistant to fungicides. The derived economic impact is disastrous, accounting for the loss of 15-40% of harvests, overcoming 15 billions of Euro per year (25% of the potential world wine production turnover). Quality control is usually done visually or through lab based analysis which need several minutes and are highly complex and expensive. The SAFEGRAPE aims to develop a simple and cheap instrument for the wine industry, able to provide a quantitative and reliable evaluation of the presence of grey rot infection in grapes in a very short time. The instrument is based on a biosensor system and on an innovative analysis method, that allows a precise and very fast analysis procedure, i.e. in less than one minute, which is compatible with the quality control procedures applied to grapes before wine-making (measure of total acidity, sugar content). The main result expected from the project is the development of the biosensor system integrated in 2 instruments: 1. portable instrument for the measure in vineyard, to be used by winegrowers in the field or after grape-harvest; 2. on-line instrument for quality control in wine production sites, to be integrated in the quality controls commonly applied (sugar and total acidity content). These instrumentations will allow to increase the wine quality and reduce the loss of harvest of about 10%, by a fast intervention in the field and is expected to have a market potential of several tens of millions of Euro for the SME proposers.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsbiosensors
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticultureviticulture
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybioprocessing technologiesfermentation
Argomento(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
FP7-SME-2008-1
Vedi altri progetti per questo bando
Meccanismo di finanziamento
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinatore
53947 NETTERSHEIM
Germania