Thursday, 31 May 2018 15:43

A decade of success

Written by  Tessa Nicholson
After a decade of success, Dr Simon Hooker has moved on from NZW. After a decade of success, Dr Simon Hooker has moved on from NZW.

When Dr Simon Hooker arrived at New Zealand Winegrowers back in 2007, he had two clear goals: to increase the amount of wine-related research undertaken and to ensure that the information from that research was passed on to industry members.

The latter is something he has felt strongly about ever since he undertook his own PhD at the Leigh Marine Laboratory in Northland.

“I remember going through the library at Auckland University and looking at all the PhD theses and MSc theses in science – there were thousands of them – and most had never seen the light of day. It amazed me.”

So when he came into the job as Research Manager for NZW, he was determined to ensure all the important findings from wine research were passed back to those who would ultimately benefit.

“I noticed that there was not a dedicated tech transfer component to what we were doing. That is the one thing I was very keen on. It is all very well doing all the science, but we have to integrate that into the industry.”

Bringing Ruby Andrew on board, to turn scientific findings into numerous fact sheets, proved a winner for both NZW and the industry at large.

“I think that is one of the real successes of what we have done,” he says, “and we can thank Ruby Andrew for having worked so closely with us, pushing that information out.”

As Dr Hooker now moves on from NZW, after more than 10 years in the job, firstly as Research Programme Manager and later as General Manager of Research and Innovation, there have been many successes, which will be felt by the industry for decades to come. Number one being the amount of government-funded research the industry is now involved in. 

“When I started, I was amazed there wasn’t more government funding. It almost shocked me to be honest. I think a lot of the industry thought $1.2 million (for the first Sauvignon Blanc Programme) was a lot of money. I thought wow, that is miniscule. The industry can be doing a lot better than that. So that was what I focused on, leveraging the dollars from member’s levies. I had come from other sectors, fishing and aquaculture – where they had huge amounts more funding than the wine industry.”

In the next decade, Hooker would increase funding, not only from government sources, but also via other research providers, to nearly $40 million – far and above the original $1.2  million provided for the very first major research programme.

That funding has seen some major wins for the wine industry, in terms of research findings.

Take for example, the Virus Elimination programme, which Hooker admits is one that he is extremely proud of.

“It had become clear that people had been researching virus in grapes for years and years and years. We knew a lot about it, but there came a point when we needed to implement that knowledge, rather than just keep on doing research. So we went to the Sustainable Farming Fund (SFF) and got the first three years of funding. 

“That was all about taking that knowledge we had accumulated and implementing it and seeing if it actually worked. We trialed it on the Gimblett Gravels primarily, and it worked really well. Then we got another three years of funding from SFF. The virus protocols we developed in that programme are still in use today. It may sound easy today, but we weren’t sure whether you could reduce virus in a vineyard – but the research programme was a huge success in that regard. It was world leading and other countries have looked at it in amazement.”

As Hooker says, in science you don’t get many big wins, but the results of the Virus Elimination programme were a major win. Another was to come a few years later, when research into Mechanical Thinning began. The idea was driven by Dominic Pecchenino, Chair of the NZW Research Committee.

“A lot of people thought it was a waste of time when we began,” Hooker says. “And it was hard to get funding in the beginning. But we got it in the end and when we started researching we also measured botrytis, thinking that was going to increase due to the physical nature of the shaking. As you know, the story is the complete opposite. Now a lot of the industry is using mechanical shaking to alleviate botrytis pressure. So that was another neat outcome and it was a huge win.”

Other research programmes that Hooker has been involved in during his decade with NZW are: the PGP Lighter Wines programme; “That is producing amazing results and some of the market penetration we have had with lighter wines is pretty incredible.”

Then there’s the Vineyard Ecosystems programme: “That is a different way of researching, trying to understand vineyards rather than fire-fighting individual issues.”

Most recently, the industry has seen government investment in the NZW Pinot Noir programme, which has received funding of $9.3million over five years, and, of course, the NZW Research Centre, which received RRI funding of $10.5 million over three years to become established.

Dr Hooker observes that this investment has been achieved partly due to the successful partnerships that have been formed between NZW, Plant & Food, Auckland University and Lincoln University.

“Over the 10 years, I have really focused on pulling those relationships between those providers and NZW, and now that relationship is very tight. There is a really good team feeling between all of us and how we strategise and work together for the benefit of the industry.”

So much so that many of the researchers’ names are known throughout the New Zealand wine industry – Vaughan Bell, Trevor Lupton, David Jordan, Mike Trought, Dion Mundy and many others. Part of the reason for that, Dr Hooker says, is because these scientists are presenting their research findings on a regular basis at events such as NZW Grape Days, (instigated by Hooker after a suggestion by Dominic Pecchenino) and the Romeo Bragato Conference.

As for the future of research as it relates to the wine industry, Hooker says it is important to keep building on the foundations already laid.

“I like to think of science and innovation as the foundation of the industry. Without a good solid base, the whole thing can fall over. Marketing is the really important house we are building, it is massive and strong. But research and innovation are the foundation and without them, things can go pear shaped. The key with research is to have a programme that allows resilience, so that when the impacts happens – and it will happen and we never know from where it will come – we will have the resilience to deal with it. It is that resilience that the research programme gives to the industry, so we are going to be around producing the world’s best wines in 100 years’ time, not just in five years.”

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