Climate Resilience

Description

Mandate: To accelerate the advancement and adoption of climate-resilient innovations and sustainable vineyard practices, ensuring the long-term viability of BC’s wine grape sector amid increasing climate variability.

Goal Statement: By 2027, BC’s wine grape industry will have increasingly adopted regionally relevant, economically viable climate-resilient practices and innovations, supported by a coordinated framework for research, funding, knowledge transfer and extension. The sector will be addressing both immediate climate pressures and long-term resilience, safeguarding its viability in the face of increasing climate variability and extreme weather.

Working Group Members:

Felix Egerer, WIGA, Unsworth Vineyards (Advisory Committee Liaison)
Chris Mark, Vintality
Hans Buchler, Park Hill Vineyards
Ruth King, UBC Okanagan Wine Research Centre
Michael Kullmann, Osoyoos Larose
Kathy Malone, Hillside Cellars Winery
Jesse MacDonald, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Jacob Medeiros, Cannon Estate Winery
Kerry Rempel, Okanagan College
Leandro Nosal, Andrew Peller Ltd.

While our working group membership is currently full, if you are interested in joining the Working Group Community, please contact Lindsay Kelm at [email protected]. Community Members will receive early updates, be invited to provide feedback on draft ideas, and help guide the group’s direction through ongoing engagement.

Strategic Priorities

Matching Industry Priorities to Research Outputs

SP1: We must establish a coordinated system to match the most urgent industry priorities with research outputs by identifying key climate challenges, forming targeted innovation clusters and creating a dynamic framework for prioritizing long-term research, mid-term applied technologies, and short-term analysis.

SP2: We must maintain a centralized, continuously updated research and knowledge hub that captures past and ongoing studies, enabling the BC grape and wine industry to make evidence-based decisions, avoid duplication, identify research gaps, and guide future innovation and investment.

SP3: We must build a ‘research in action’ feedback loop where growers and wineries using new practices and technologies share data on real-world performance. This information then informs research and development committees (such as BCWGC / CGCN), supporting them in establishing recommendations and priorities for the next round of research funding.

Plant, Soil, and Water

SP4: We must enhance regional climate monitoring and forecasting tools, leveraging platforms like the Decision Aid System (DAS), to deliver timely, localized insights that help vineyards and wineries respond proactively to climate variability.

SP5: We must determine and evaluate viable approaches to improve industry access to a diversity of clean plant and rootstock material that meets both grower and market needs in collaboration with existing stakeholders (to include the Canadian Grapevine Certification Network (CGCN), the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), and international supply chain partners).

SP6: We must identify cost-effective precision agriculture and adaptive viticulture technologies that increase vineyard resilience and efficiency, and support adoption through training, extension, and lessons learned from successful practices elsewhere.

Promoting Adoption of Knowledge, Practices, and Technologies

SP7: We must strengthen the KTT and Extension system for industry by embedding knowledge transfer into research, mapping clear adoption pathways, and delivering extension through training and digital tools.

SP8: We must develop best practices to embed the economic case into KTT, extension, and training, ensuring cost-benefit, ROI, and practical guidance are clearly communicated and relevant to growers and wineries.

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