The wine industry spends only $1.2 million of grape levies on research compared with $6 million from the similarly sized kiwifruit industry. Plant and Food chief operating officer Bruce Campbell touted research as one path to profitability, at the New Zealand Winegrowers' Romeo Bragato conference in Auckland last week. Plant and Food business manager Deborah Tod said a desk-top exercise looking at research investment internationally in sectors including information technology, showed about 2.5 per cent of total revenue was the norm for research investment. For the wine industry, that would mean 2.5 per cent of $1.1 billion, or $27.5 million.