As part of the National Wine Agency’s Georgian Vine and Wine Culture Scientific Project, Fabio Quaglino, Associate Professor at the University of Milan, visited Georgia to study grapevine phytoplasma diseases.

Since 2014, Professor Quaglino has been collaborating with Georgian scientists on this research. Together, they collected wild grapevine samples from both the Jighaura collection at the Agricultural Scientific Research Center (under the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture) and from natural habitats during a specially organized expedition.

The samples will be analyzed at the University of Milan, and the findings are expected to shed light on grapevine phytoplasma diseases - an issue of major importance to the viticulture and winemaking industry. Grapevine yellows, a group of diseases caused by phytoplasmas, lead to significant crop losses in nearly all winemaking grape varieties.