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Speaker 1: The government is partnering with New Zealand wine growers to

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Speaker 1: essentially redesign our vineyards. The goal is to get more

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Speaker 1: sunlight on the violence because more sunlight means more grapes

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Speaker 1: and that would mean higher yields, and the changes could

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Speaker 1: boost vineyard productivity by twenty two thousand dollars a hectare.

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Speaker 1: CEO of the Wine Growers Research Center, doctor Juliet Ensel,

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Speaker 1: is with us this evening. Hi, Juliet, how is this

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Speaker 1: going to work?

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Speaker 2: Oh, hijack? So yeah, basically, the vineyard profitability has been

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Speaker 2: in a bit of a decline and it's many due

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Speaker 2: to increasing costs of production. And I think everything that

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Speaker 2: can be done has been done so far, it's been

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Speaker 2: at let incremental changes. But this new research program is

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Speaker 2: really a step change in productivity and it's potentially about

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Speaker 2: doubling production but not compromising on quality. And it's actually

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Speaker 2: coming at a really good time as well. We've got

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Speaker 2: lots of replanting. About twenty thousand hectares will be due

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Speaker 2: to be replanted in the next ten to twenty years.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, it's really exciting.

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Speaker 1: And so in practical too, what kind of difference does

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Speaker 1: it mean on a vineyard. What changes, Yeah, no, good question.

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Speaker 2: It's really a redesign of the canopy management. So it's

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Speaker 2: setting up the grapevine system, the training system, and the

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Speaker 2: plantings and really, as you mentioned in the intro, enabling

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Speaker 2: the vines to capture as much sunlight as they can

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Speaker 2: and encourage that sunlight to be transformed into fruits rather

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Speaker 2: than leaves or vegetative growth. So it's a new training system.

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Speaker 2: They'll be larger, they'll be wider and higher, they'll carry

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Speaker 2: more nodes, more shoots, and you'll grow a much larger

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Speaker 2: but less dense canopy. So getting light to the right place.

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Speaker 1: What does it do to the taste of the wine.

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Speaker 2: So this is absolutely one of the criteria that it

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Speaker 2: must not compromise on taste or quality of the wine.

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Speaker 2: So it's very early early days. We're just about to

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Speaker 2: start this research in Arnest, but you know, we've done

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Speaker 2: a bit of pilots work over the last year and

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Speaker 2: we're really confident that it's not going to compromise on quality.

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Speaker 1: Fantastic. Oh sounds really interesting, Thanks, Juliet. There is doctor

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Speaker 1: Julian Ansel who is the CEO of the Brigato Institute

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Speaker 1: New Zealand Wine Growers Research Center. For more from Hither

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