17 Dec Chasing Smoke – Marketing Ag Tech
More than 100 fires burned in the wine regions of California, Oregon and Washington during 2020. The total damage won’t be known until it’s too late, but there is hope for the future. This is a story about identifying a clear product advantage and building a marketing program around it. In this case, an emerging agricultural technology product that has the potential to protect crops from this and other extreme environmental conditions, which ultimately helps secure the food supply.
Even if grape crops appeared to survive the fires, the vintage could be lost to a condition called smoke taint – a complex condition that ruins the taste of wine. Volatile phenols released by burning wood and widely spread by smoke are absorbed into the fruit. These compounds can penetrate the fruit cuticle – its skin – bonding with sugars in the grape. Unfortunately, smoke taint is not apparent until after the fermentation process of a vintage is complete when wine produced in these conditions takes on a bouquet of ashtray-tasting smoke.
While smoke still lingered in the air during the fires earlier this year, many wineries rushed grape samples to labs to test for smoke taint markers. No matter the results, the sheer volume of smoke smothering the Western states has dampened the hopes of many vintners for the 2020 vintage.
The increasing occurrence and intensity of wildfires during the past 5 years, has inspired universities and companies producing crop protection products around the world to delve into studies on smoke taint and potential solutions to its damaging effects in the winemaking process.
In 2018, a research team at the University of British Columbia began studying the capabilities of existing products to protect grapes from smoke taint. They evaluated Parka®, a biofilm with physical and biochemical properties that supplement a plant’s cuticular membrane, the anchor product of Cultiva® LLC, based in Las Vegas. In addition, two products produced by other manufacturers were also evaluated – both considered effective for control of powdery mildew in the study.
After 2 years of testing, the results found the cuticle supplementation of Parka reduced the levels of smoke taint compounds by 300 percent when applied after ripening and prior to exposure. A clear advantage over the results of the other two products, which showed insignificant or intensified reactions to the presence of smoke taint.
Now, similar research into proactive protection to prevent smoke taint is being conducted by the University of California, Davis and the Australian Wine Research Institute.
In an interview broadcast on December 2 on RFD-TV’s Market Day Report; Luis Hernandez, CEO of Cultiva, reported that Parka has exceeded expectations since the company began testing the product in 2012 on a variety of high-value crops. Parka has been proven effective in protecting numerous fruit, vegetable and nut crops from excessive rain, high heat and other environmental stresses. Due to the safe and soft nature of its SureSeal® technology, Parka is designated as ‘exempt from tolerance’ which allows growers to make limitless applications per season. Hernandez noted that it’s important to begin spray treatments at fruit set, which allows Parka to consistently strengthen the cuticle layer throughout the most vulnerable and stressful periods during the growing season.
Although not originally aware of the University of BC research, when researchers contacted Cultiva, the company readily agreed to collaborate on the second year Parka trials. Hernandez stressed the importance of the continuing research on Parka concerning smoke taint and stated that the ultimate focus of Cultiva is applying their research efforts and agronomic knowledge to help secure the food supply – creating predictability for farmers in their fight against the unforeseeable effects of climate change.
That is a true marketing advantage, substantiated by research.
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