Grapevine Diseases Costs Wine Grape Growers and State
Issues
relating to various grapevine diseases, including Pierce’s Disease (PD),
grapevine leafroll, and powdery mildew, are under scrutiny by Kate Binzen
Fuller, a post-doctoral researcher in the Agricultural and Resource Economics
Department at UC Davis, and colleagues.
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| Kate Fuller, post-doctoral researcher at UC Davis |
The
team’s PD research, a CDFA-funded effort, analyzes the costs of PD and
associated control measures for grape growers and nurseries, and the benefits
from state and federal programs that have been put in place to control its
spread.
“To understand the effects of PD in California requires an
understanding of differences in disease characteristics and wine grape
production characteristics in different parts of the state,” said Fuller. “In
northern California, especially in Napa and Sonoma Counties, the Blue-Green
Sharpshooter has spread the disease for many years, causing chronic but
manageable damages. Wine grapes in Napa and Sonoma are typically very expensive
and yield per acre is managed to be very low.”
“In southern California,” Fuller continued, “wine grapes are
produced with much higher yields per acre and fetch much lower prices per ton,
and the insect that spreads the disease is much more efficient at doing so. In Riverside
County in particular, a non-native vector, the Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter
(GWSS), decimated many acres of vineyard land in the late 1990s and early
2000s.
“As a result, the CDFA put programs in place in to prevent
GWSS spread from southern California where the GWSS is now managed but endemic,
to northern California’s high value wine regions,” stated Fuller.
“Our research suggests
that PD of grapevines costs more than
$100 million per year, even with public control programs in place that cost $50
million per year,” said Fuller. “This amount includes the costs of state and
federal efforts to monitor and control the GWSS, research on PD/GWSS, and costs
of compliance with the regulations by private firms including nurseries.”
Fuller estimates that under
the current program, PD costs wine grape growers and consumers $92 million
annually. If the control program ended and the GWSS became widespread
throughout California, the annual cost borne by growers and consumers could
increase by as much as $185 million.
In additional research, Fuller and her colleagues estimate that benefits from
research, development, and adoption of PD-resistant vines range from $4 million
to $125 million annually over a 50-year horizon, depending on the length of the
amount of time until these vines are available to growers, and the rate of
adoption. The sooner the resistant vines are available and the more growers
adopt them, the greater the benefit.
Labels: Grapevine Diseases Cost Wine Grape Growers and State, Kate Fuller, Pierce's Disease and wine grape production, Pierce's Disease on Grapevine, The Cost of Pierce's Disease and GWSS
