Vineyards biodiversity has its own language

Biome Makers, a startup founded in San Francisco (USA), launches a study of biodiversity from more than 600 vineyards all over the world, highlights and enhances the plots that register an extraordinary microbiological diversity

The biodiversity ranking driven by Biome Makers measures and evaluates the global complexity of microbial communities as a basis for the biological activity in soils and as a sustainability indicator. This is an element derived from the respect for the terroir and the implementation of good practices in the vineyard. The ranking has been established using biodiversity indexes traditionally used in ecology and other related sciences, based on the richness, complexity, and balance of the microorganism communities that inhabit the vineyard soil.

The wineries with unique microbiological diversity, according to the findings, have been sorted in the top 10 of the year 2017. In the USA, the selected wineries –in alphabetical order- are: Bettinelli Vineyards (Napa Valley, California), Big Creek Vineyard (Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania), Alta Loma Vineyard – Monterey Pacific (Soledad, California), OVID (Napa Valley, California), Rainin Vineyard – Renteria Vineyard (Calistoga, California), Screaming Eagle (Oakville, California), Silver Oak (Napa Valley, California), Trefethen (Napa Valley, California), Tres Sabores (St. Helena, California) and the last one is not published due to a confidentiality agreement (Napa Valley, California).

Biome Makers is a Smart Microbial Discovery startup based in San Francisco developing tools and products for more sustainable and productive agriculture. With the first development known as WineSeq®, the company looks for measuring the health and quality of vineyards by using the microbiome of the soil as a biomarker.

At Biome Makers, the interest is focused on the food of the future. Therefore, their technology was developed with precision in mind. They aim to help agricultural innovators make decisions concerning their crops while keeping their unique microbial communities in mind, through a unique combination of DNA sequencing and data intelligence.