Prof. Geoff Gurr1, Dr Jian Liu1

1Charles Sturt University, Orange, Australia

Biography:

Geoff Gurr is a Distinguished Professor of Applied Ecology at Charles Sturt University. Following doctoral training at Imperial College, Rothamsted, and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, his work over the last three decades has focused on harmonising agriculture with the natural resource base and this has been supported by research funding exceeding $28 million. He has successfully completed 43 PhD and MPhil students and close to 300 journal papers. He is immediate past President of the International Organisation for Biological Control (Asia Pacific) and elected Fellow of the Royal Society NSW and the Royal Entomological Society.

Abstract:

The global viticulture sector is entering a life stage characterised by efforts to drive sustainability. In Australia, this metamorphosis is coincident with financial pressures from market instability and oversupply. This presentation will illustrate how vegetation patterns within and around vineyards can affect the strength of ecosystem services that underpin sustainability and can reduce production costs. These services include arthropod-mediated suppression of key insect pests. Laboratory screening of plant species has revealed selective species that enhance longevity and egg production of Trichogramma species yet are not fed upon by the key vineyard pest, lightbrown apple moth (Epiphyas postvittana) (LBAM). Field trials in commercial vineyards measured the effects of these plants when used as under-vine groundcovers (for prostrate species) or mid-row groundcovers (for taller plants). Plants such as alyssum (Lobularia maritima), significantly reduced grape damage by LBAM and this had the flow-on effect of reducing incidence and severity of botrytis bunch rot, a fungal disease that is exacerbated by LBAM feeding. Because these groundcover species were shorter than the weedy vegetation they replaced, air flow is likely to have been promoted in vineyards so delivering the additional ecosystem services of reduced risk of frost (since cool air is better able to flow down gradients) and vine diseases (since fungal pathogens are favoured by humidity). Other food plant species are too tall to be accommodated in vineyards but are often present in adjacent areas and our vineyard surveys revealed that areas of vineyards bordered by roadways had more natural enemies. Roadways in rural areas are often lined with shrubs and trees that provide food resources and promote habitat connectivity between vineyards and donor habitats in the wider landscape. Each of these observations suggests scope to promote vineyard ecosystem services and address emerging, climate-change-driven challenges such as scale insects.