Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Matthew Daneman

Vitis Biosciences Inc., based at Cornell University`s state Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva and using Cornell-devised plant biotechnology, is busy raising money along with rootstock resistant to the fanleaf virus.

Any variety of grape vine could then be grafted onto that rootstock, said Chief Executive Ramon L. Garcia, who also is president of the biotechnology consulting firm InterLink Biotechnologies. That New Jersey company is one of the shareholders in Vitis.

To make the roots resistant, a chunk of DNA from the virus is introduced into the cells of the grape plant, with those cells then bred into full plants.

That bit of DNA works much like a vaccine, turning on the plant`s natural defense mechanisms against the virus, said Marc Fuchs, an assistant professor at the ag station`s department of plant pathology and the research director for Vitis.

Similar genetic modification techniques developed at Cornell were used in the 1990s to stop a virus decimating Hawaii`s papaya crop, Garcia said.

According to Vitis, close to 3 million acres of vineyards in France, Italy, Germany and California are infected with the virus, and grape yield from infected plants can be down as much as 80 percent.

While not a huge problem in California`s Napa Valley region, said David Whitmer, Napa County agricultural commissioner, "for those who have it, it`s certainly significant."

"You have a lot of investment in the development of a vineyard," Whitmer said. "Those vines are intended to thrive and do well for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. When you end up having a significant issue like fanleaf virus, it can really reduce the viability of that vineyard. From a business perspective, you may not have even have paid off the debt on the original planting" by the time the yield starts declining.

Vitis Biosciences is a collaboration among Cornell, Rochester venture capital firm Excell Partners, Chilean grape biotechnology company GenVitis SA and InterLink Biotechnologies.

The grapevine fanleaf work is 8-year-old GenVitis` first foray into the U.S. marketplace, Garcia said. The company first got interested in Cornell`s grape biotechnology when it licensed an enzyme developed to make grapes resistant to a certain kind of fungus.

While Vitis Biosciences hopes to also offer its rootstock to European growers, the company will first focus on California growers because European public sentiment is less open to use of genetic modification in food and beverages, Garcia said.

The current field testing is being done in part to find whether the genetic material in the roots will travel up the stem to the leaves and grapes, which theoretically it shouldn`t, Garcia said.

The four acres of modified roots planted in June in California will be monitored and tested for the next four years as the researchers also identify the plants that are most resistant and continue to breed those.

Even as Vitis is developing the genetically modified root technology, it also is putting together a nontraditional business model - it plans to sell the rootstock to lower-end wineries, but use a subscription-based model for high-end wineries.

The high-end wineries would get the rootstock for free but Vitis would sell subscriptions to wine drinkers.

Those subscribers pony up the money and, in exchange, receive deep discounts on wine coming from those grapes, Garcia said.

The company could start selling the subscriptions in four to five years, he said.

In the meantime, the company is trying to raise $2 million from investors to continue its research and development work.

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