Red starter

For the economy of many Italian regions, vitiviniculture constitutes a sector of capital importance. This territorial quality, through a continuous connection between tradition and innovation, has been able to persist along time, in spite of the changes occurred in the preferences of consumers.
The selection of phenotypic variants of grape berry, the scientific progress of agricultural practices as well as the technological innovations in oenological process have progressively renewed both vine growing and winemaking, but the dual name territory-product has been never fallen.
Now, in order to face the new requirements for a more competitive vitiviniculture, scientific research must furnish new instruments to improve, if possible, both quality and typicalness of the wines produced in the famous wine regions.

The project will focus firstly on the recognition of the Saccharomyces and non-Saccharomyces strains already present on the Collection of Food Science Department and isolated from grapes, musts and wines in previous studies.
Strain-specific profile will obtained by molecular techniques such as RAPD-PCR, rep-PCR, microsatellite analysis.
Small-scale winemaking in Montepulciano musts will be carried out with the selected Saccharomyces strains alone and together with non-Saccharomyces, with and without sulphur dioxide addition.