Legislation aimed at protecting the Barossa and McLaren Vale regions from urban sprawl has passed the South Australian Parliament.

The character preservation legislation covers 40,000 hectares of agricultural land just south of Adelaide and almost 150,000 hectares in the Barossa Valley.

It removes the planning minister's power to approve major developments without parliamentary scrutiny.

Grape grower Dudley Brown was instrumental in pushing for change.

Liberal MP Ivan Venning, whose electorate takes in the Barossa, is pleased any residential subdivisions in the two wine regions will now need full parliamentary approval.

He says nobody disagrees with that, particularly when you see what happened with Mount Barker [development].