Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The annual meeting was held in Traverse City MI on November 10. Administrative advisor, Tom Burr provided updates on federal situations that may have significant impacts on the research projects that fall within NE1020. These included election results, the current prognosis for earmark funding, such as Viticultural Consortium and issues associated with the 2012 Farm Bill. Nancy Sweet followed with comments on FPS with particular attention to funding and program development under the National Clean Plant Network. Election of the 2011 secretary resulted with Paul Read from NE being elected. Doug Buhler, MSU Agricultural Experiment Station Director, made comments related to MSU facilities in the Traverse City area. Committee reports were given. The discussion throughout the committee reports and state reports focused on the goals of NE1020 and how to collect data from the field experiments in the different states in a standardized and meaningful manner. Several variables and conditions such as frost and killing of vines by different causes all affect uniform data collection. NE1020 project members are striving to produce data that will valuable to the US wine industry. Committee reports included Viticulture, chair Tim Martinson, NY, Data Collection and Statistics committee, chair Dan Ward, PA, Meteorology Committee, Tony Wolf, VA and Enology Committee, Steve Menke, CO. Considerable discussion followed on development of a standard wine making procedure that would fit all regions and member facilities.

Annual reports from contributing states were delivered. NE1020 used to maintain its website and reports on a PSU server. Because of the loss of an IT person at PSU this is not longer possible. NE1020 will approach NGWI to determine if they may place their website along with NGWI. A significant amount of time was spent on discussing data collection protocols. The members of NE1020 continue to strive to ensure that data collected following significant investment of time and funding from different sources will be of significant value to researchers and stakeholders. Concern was expressed that funding received from the Viticultural Consortium grants program for NE1020 was reduced this year. A communication from VC grants coordinator expressed that reduced funds were available to fund all proposals in 2010. It was discussed what priority data would be collected from the field plots should all funding from VC be lost. Ed Helman will write the VC West proposal. Imed Dami will write the VC East proposal.