The Italian group of wine microbiology (GMV): Validation of a synthetic medium for the characterization of wine strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The Italian group of wine microbiology (GMV) was reconstituted in 2014 with a mission to collect all the skills concerning wine making. The partners of the group GMV are 19 universities and two research centers. The main purpose is to build a benchmark for science and wine industry, able to offer applicative solutions and disseminate the numerous activities carried out by different Italian research centers on issues of "Wine Microbiology”. At present, the group is working both for research dissemination, with the publication of joint articles in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, and for a common experiment involving 17 partners. The purpose of this experiment is to validate a synthetic medium, similar to grape must, for the characterization of wine strains belonging to Saccharomyces cerevisiae species. For this reason, a common protocol has been developed in order to assess its effectiveness to obtain reproducible and statistically valid results. Furthermore, this multicenter experiment will assess the extent of experimental differences due to the fermentation in different laboratories with the same strain. The development of a validated medium and of the291confidential limits for fermentation data are expected to improve the comparison of experimental data obtained in different centers and to obtain a shared protocol for wine strainevaluation. The first preliminary results will be elucidated and discussed.