Research and Development

South Africa Wine RDI funds research that will contribute to the South African wine industry’s profitability, international competitiveness, and sustainability. Its strategic focus is to achieve and maintain a research distribution of 20% fundamental research, 60% applied research and 20% innovation research. It is not always possible to categorise projects exclusively into one of these categories, and projects are therefore categorised where their nature predominantly resides.

South Africa Wine RDI operates on a committee system comprising industry representatives, which carefully evaluates each research proposal received to ensure the project has industry relevance. These committees convene three times a year to discuss concept proposals, new project applications, progress reports of running projects and final reports of completed projects.

Winetech Research Booklet

Flagship Programmes

Within its portfolio of research projects, South Africa Wine RDI has three flagship programmes addressing climate change, water efficiency and plant breeding. These three programmes address critical research needs in the South African wine industry. Within each programme, all the individual projects tie into each other to provide more comprehensive outcomes.

The goal is to encourage collaboration among researchers and organisations to use resources and funds most effectively. Often multidisciplinary approaches also create better solutions. South Africa Wine RDI aims to provide the industry with novel solutions demonstrating effective collaboration activities’ value.