Oregon researchers slow down water loss and fight pests with food-grade product. Water management is a key issue for grape growers, particularly in arid growing regions such as the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington. Wine grapes may not be the region’s thirstiest crop, requiring about half the water of tree fruits, but they still demand the equivalent of 22 to 26 inches of precipitation each year. A new pumping station on the Yakima River near Benton City has made life easier for growers in the Red Mountain AVA, and further west in the valley the Roza Irrigation District approved a new pumping system after drought conditions restricted water flows to growers in spring 2015. Those strategies focused on managing supply, but work by Clive Kaiser, an extension horticulturist with the Umatilla County Extension Service and Oregon State University professor attached to the Oregon Wine Research Institute is looking at things from the vine’s point of view. Building on his work developing a film to protect sweet cherries from splitting, he’s spent the past two years piloting a film that aims to help vines hold on to the water they’ve got. While the danger for cherries is rapid uptake of water, Kaiser wants to help slow down a vine’s water demand. “Water tables in the Pacific Northwest are dropping, so we have to look at water efficiencies as something for the future,” he said. “So anything we can do to reduce water usage is going to be key to continuing production into the future.” While the impetus came during the California drought of 2015, the ongoing risk of drought conditions all along the West Coast make it relevant to Oregon, where some Willamette Valley growers are finding themselves short of water.