Sarah Marie Lyons, Wesley Zandberg, James Favell, and Daniel Durall*
*University of British Columbia (UBC), 1177 Research Rd, Kelowna, British Columbia V4V 1N7, Canada (daniel.durall@ubc.ca)

The increase in forest fires in recent years has had a large effect on North American wineries. When grapes in vineyards are exposed to large amounts of forest fire smoke, volatile phenolic compounds in the smoke absorb into the grapes and result in smoke-tainted wine with ash-like flavors. Wineries want to know more about how smoke exposure will alter their vineyards and wine flavors and how they can mitigate these effects. Understanding how the fungal communities in vineyards change in response to agricultural sprays and forest fire smoke will help wineries to continue producing unique, regionally-specific wines. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of heavy forest fire smoke and agricultural sprays on fungal communities of grapes growing in three different vineyards. Experimental vines in three different vineyards were exposed to either smoke, potentially mitigating agricultural sprays, or a combination of both treatments. Next generation sequencing was used to analyze the composition of the fungal communities on grape bunches before exposure to the treatments, 14 days after exposure, and again immediately before harvest. We found no significant differences between the control and treatment vines at any of the three vineyards; however, we did see differences in the control vines among vineyards.

Funding Support: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)