BRI Extension Team

The extension team’s role is to communicate research findings to the industry, ensuring information and tools delivered by research programmes can be adopted and applied by members to make better-informed decisions for their businesses. As well as transferring New Zealand research, the scientists translate knowledge from elsewhere to meet New Zealand conditions.

lobal experience in wine science. She has a PhD in grapevine physiology as well as a post-doctorate on sustainable viticulture, and another on grapevine cold hardiness. She was an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist of Viticulture at Oregon State University from 1994 to 2006, where her own research continued in grapevine physiology, particularly carbon assimilation and allocation, water relations, and the impact of rootstock on scion physiology. From 2013 to 2017, Carmo was an Associate Professor of Viticulture at Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, where she taught grapevine physiology and researched viticulture issues relevant to the New Zealand winegrowing industry.

Paul is a Research and Extension Specialist and his role will be split between helping to shape and deliver BRI’s applied viticulture research programme, enhancing and delivering the extension program and supporting industry’s technical needs. Paul is in the final stages of completing a PhD in agronomy and viticulture with Lincoln University, and has more than a decade of experience in research management, extension and agronomy experience working with multiple crops in Australia and his home country of Cameroon in Central Africa. Work for his PhD has focused on winter pruning in grapes and the effect on growth, yield and grape quality.

Chris is a Viticulture Technical Specialist, focused on establishing BRI’s new commercial viticulture field trial unit. Chris will lead client and industry funded projects mainly centred on the evaluation of crop protection products, with responsibility for pricing, trial establishment and delivery through to reporting. Chris has more than 30 years’ experience in New Zealand’s wine industry, a science degree in viticulture from Charles Stuart University, and runs his own viticulture consultancy business.