The relaunch of New York’s Grapevine Certification Program is making a big impact on testing vines for viruses. Up until now, the country has been dominated by California’s program for virus control effort, a program New York’s three biggest nurseries in Clifton Springs, Fredonia and Dundee weren’t satisfied with.

“Unfortunately their program, much like most of the programs throughout the world, is based on visual inspection of viruses in the vineyard as opposed to actual lab testing and because of that they’re having issues with, even though its certified material, some of the material coming out that’s not clean,” Eric Amberg, owner of Amberg Grapevines, said.

New York’s program, which has been in the works for the past eight years, recently relaunched in partnership with Cornell University to conduct stringent testing for plant viruses. The viruses tested for are known to lower the quality of the fruit which lowers the quality of the vines.

“If we really want to have clean vines we need to have a good effort by the industry, and the university to track and make sure the vines stay clean,” Amberg said.

In part of that effort, staff at the New York State Department of Agriculture have been working with the three New York nurseries to collect leaf samples of 25% of the vines every year. The samples are then sent to the virology lab at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva for testing.

“On a rotational basis every vine is tested every 5 years and this level of testing is quite unprecedented and provides some assurance on the cleanliness in terms of absence of economically relevant viruses,” Marc Fuchs, professor of Plant Virology at Cornell University, said.

Vine samples from all three nurseries are identified only by a number and the program tests the samples in what Fuchs describes as a two pronged approach.

“The leaf samples are collected in the spring, for certain viruses and the fall for other viruses and this is because the optimal window during the rolling season for testing and detecting viruses is optimal for 4 viruses in the spring and 5 other viruses in the fall,” Fuchs said.

Along with the assurance that the planting stocks for new vines will have a level of cleanliness compatible with high quality wine production, the certification program will also open borders for the New York nurseries.

“Our Canadian counterparts have recently recognized officially our program meaning that the 3 New York grape nurseries are capable of shipping planting stocks to Canada,” Fuchs said.

Just another benefit the program will provide for the nurseries going forward.

“In the future, I think it’s gonna have a huge impact,” Amberg said. “We know now that what we’re selling has been tested repeatedly to ensure that it stays clean so that is an insurance policy not only for the customers but for ourselves.”