Dr Paul Boss: linking grape development with wine flavour and aroma

Dr Paul Boss is researching how grape genotype, environment and management affects wine flavour and aroma.

• 11 July 2011 | Updated 24 November 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications

Current activities

To understand the impact of environment, management and genotype on grape secondary metabolism, Dr Paul Boss's current research activities bring together the disciplines of:

• analytical chemistry
• molecular biology
• genetics.

His work aims to link grape metabolites with wine chemistry and sensory outcomes.

Background

In 1994 Dr Boss moved to Adelaide, in South Australia, from New Zealand to take up a doctoral scholarship in the first Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Viticulture.

Dr Boss's doctoral project concerned the molecular biological processes involved with the production of anthocyanin pigments in grape berry skins.

Following this, he took up a research position at CSIRO Plant Industry to investigate inflorescence formation in grapes with the major goal of rapidly inducing flower production in juvenile vines.

This interest in flowering and molecular genetics lead Dr Boss to the John Innes Centre in England, where he worked on flowering in the model plant Arabidopsis.

In 2004, Dr Boss returned to Adelaide to lead a research group at CSIRO Plant Industry investigating flavour and aroma development in grape berries, with a particular interest in the link between grape secondary metabolism and wine flavour and aroma.

Academic qualifications

Dr Boss completed a:

• Bachelor of Science, at the University of Auckland in New Zealand
• Master of Science, from the same university in 1994, having investigated the causes of browning in apples
• Doctor of Philosophy in 1998, after moving to Adelaide to take up a doctoral scholarship in 1994 to work on grape anthocyanins.

See a list of recent scientific papers by Dr Boss on the next page.