A new wine research lab will be opened at Acadia University in Wolfville, that has been funded by provincial and federal governments to benefit Nova Scotia’s growing wine industry.

For this lab, the government has announced an investment of $487,960 over two years under Growing Forward 2 programme.

Growing Forward 2 is a five-year framework agreement for agriculture, where the cost is shared among the federal and provincial governments in the ratio of 60-40.

Nova Scotia’s wineries annually produced about one million litres of wine and recorded sales of $15.4m in 2015.

Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said: "Nova Scotia’s wine industry has potential for tremendous growth that will lead to more jobs and more exports and our goal is to assist it where we can.

"It’s important to have quality lab services, especially as we look to the future of export."

The new lab will be used for both academic research and industry collaboration and will be located at chemistry building of Elliott Hall.

Research partners include producers of food and beverages, biochemists, food scientists, dietitians and plant physiologists.

There are about 94 grape producers and around 23 wineries in Nova Scotia and this industry accounts for $7.3m in wages annually.

Wineries are significant to tourism industry – 100,000 people visited winery properties in 2014.

The lab equipment will be installed this month and is expected to get operational by June or July this year.