Terroir 1996 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 Viticultural zoning of the country of Mendoza, Argentina. Study of the first zone : department of Luján de Cuyo. Statement of the study year 2002

Viticultural zoning of the country of Mendoza, Argentina. Study of the first zone : department of Luján de Cuyo. Statement of the study year 2002

Abstract

[English version below]

La région viticole de Mendoza est la principale zone vitivinicole d’Argentine qui se compose de 3 oasis (Nord, Valle de Uco, Sud). La première zone vitivinicole, située dans l’oasis Nord, est composée par les département de Luján de Cuyo et Maipu. C’est la zone de production la plus ancienne et la plus reconnue pour la qualité de sa production. Ce travail se porte plus particulièrement sur le département de Luján de Cuyo qui constitue le lieu traditionnel de production du Malbec argertin. Ce travail propose de caractériser les terroirs et de mettre en avant leurs typicités. Le croisement des informations climatiques et des analyses des sols est à l’origine d’un zonage agro-écologique réalisé antérieurement, ces zones seront précisées dans cette étude et seront définies comme des Unités Terroirs de Base (UTB). La mise en place d’un réseau de 14 parcelles d’observation composées de la même variété de référence le Malbec, permet l’étude du potentiel vitivinicole de cette zone. A la suite d’une première année d’étude, les zones homogènes ont pu être précisées et caractérisées du point de vue du comportement de la plante et de la typicité des vins. Ce travail sera poursuivi dans les années à venir pour confirmer les résultats et donner des réponses aux producteurs.

Mendoza is the most important wine producing province of Argentina. It is composed of three cases (Oasis Norte, Oasis Valle de Uco, Oasis Sur). The main wine producing zone is located in the “North Oasis” and is composed of the departments of Luján de Cuyo and Maipu. It is the oldest and the most well known zone for its quality of produce. This study focuses on the department of Luján, which is the traditional vine growing production area for the argentine Malbec variety. The aim of this study is to characterise the different “terroirs” and to point out their typicities. The interaction between climatic information and soil analysis had allowed to realise a agronomic and ecological zonation in a previous work. The zones which had been defined will be precise in this study and will constitute the “Basic Units of Terroir” (UTB). Within these units a net of fourteen vineyards were elected. All of them present the same reference variety : Malbec, in order to study the viticulture capacity of this zone. Homogeneous zones have yet been located and characterised according to the plant behaviour and the typicity of wines. Further studies are foreseen, so that the results can be verified and can help the productors.

DOI:

Publication date: February 11, 2022

Issue: Terroir 2002

Type: Article

Authors

A. VIGIL (1), M. GRASSIN (1), H. OJEDA (1), C. CATANIA (1), H. VILA (1), R. DEL MONTE (1), J. ZULUAGA (2)

(1) INTA Estación Experimental Agropecuario (EEA) Mendoza, Chacras de Coria, Mendoza, Argentina
(2) Instituto Nacional del Agua (INA), Ave Belgrano, Capital, Mendoza, Argentina

Keywords

zonage, sol, climat, eau, potentialité vitivinicole, typicité
zone, soil, climate, water, viticulture potential, typicity

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2002

Citation

Related articles…

Simulating climate change impact on viticultural systems in historical and emergent vineyards

Global climate change affects regional climates and hold implications for wine growing regions worldwide. Although winegrowers are constantly adapting to internal and external factors, it seems relevant to develop tools, which will allow them to better define actual and future agro-climatic potentials. Within this context, we develop a modelling approach, able to simulate the impact of environmental conditions and constraints on vine behaviour and to highlight potential adaptation strategies according to different climate change scenarios. Our modeling approach, named SEVE (Simulating Environmental impacts on Viticultural Ecosystems), provides a generic modeling framework for simulating grapevine growth and berry ripening under different conditions and constraints (slope, aspect, soil type, climate variability…) as well as production strategies and adaptation rules according to climate change scenarios. Each activity is represented by an autonomous agent able to react and adapt its reaction to the variability of environmental constraints. Using this model, we have recently analyzed the evolution of vineyards’ exposure to climatic risks (frost, pathogen risk, heat wave) and the adaptation strategies potentially implemented by the winegrowers. This approach, implemented for two climate change scenarios, has been initiated in France on traditional (Loire Valley) and emerging (Brittany) vineyards. The objective is to identify the time horizons of adaptations and new opportunities in these two regions. Carried out in collaboration with wine growers, this approach aims to better understand the variability of climate change impacts at local scale in the medium and long term.

Impact of changes in pruning practices on vine growth and yield

A gradual decline in vineyards has been observed over the past twenty years worldwide. This might be explained by the climate change, practices change or the increase of dieback diseases. To increase the longevity of vines, we studied the impact of different pruning strategies in four adult and four young vineyards located in France and Spain. In France, vineyards were planted with Cabernet franc on 3309C while Spanish trials were planted with Tempranillo grafted on 110R. Vegetative expression, yield, quality of berries and wood vessels conductivity were measured. The distribution of vegetative expression, yield and berry composition between primary and secondary vegetation were quantified. Finally, tomography was used to evaluate the implication of the treatments on sap flows.
First results show that i) the respectful pruning leads to an increase of 30 to 50% more secondary shoots than the aggressive pruning in France and between 15 and 20% in Spain, ii) there is no major effect on the yield over the first two years following the implementation of the new pruning practices, although the proportion of clusters from suckers is higher on the respectful pruning method. On young vines, the development of the trunk according to a respectful pruning leads to a loss of harvest 2 years after planting. This is due to the removal, on the future trunk, of the green suckers which carrying bunches. This operation carried out in spring rather than during winter pruning, would promote a better leaf / fruit balance when the plant comes into production, and could lead to better hydraulic conduction in the vessels of the trunk. Maintaining these trials for several years will provide more robust data to assess the impact of these practices on the vines over the long term.

Local adaptation tools to ensure the viticultural sustainability in a changing climate

[lwp_divi_breadcrumbs home_text="IVES" use_before_icon="on" before_icon="||divi||400" module_id="publication-ariane" _builder_version="4.19.4" _module_preset="default" module_text_align="center" module_font_size="16px" text_orientation="center"...

The use of rootstock as a lever in the face of climate change and dieback of vineyard

As viticulture faces challenges such as climate change or vineyard dieback, the choice of the variety and rootstock becomes more and more crucial. To study rootstock levers in the Bordeaux region, a parcel of Cabernet Sauvignon (CS) was planted with four rootstocks in 2014. Twenty repetitions of each of the following four rootstocks were set up: 101-14 MGt, Nemadex AB, 420A MGt and Gravesac. The number of bunches, yields and pruning weights of the vine shoots were measured individually on 240 vines from 2017 to 2021. Since 2020, nitrogen status assessed by assimilable nitrogen level, hydric status assessed by δ13C and berry maturity were measured on 80 samples taken from 20 repetitions of the four rootstocks. A lower yield was measured for CS grafted onto Nemadex AB due to the lower number of bunches and the lower weight of berries. The differences between the other three rootstocks are small, but CS grafted onto 420A MGt was the most productive. The CS grafted onto Nemadex AB had the lowest pruning weight while 101-14 MGt had the highest. In 2020, δ13C showed a more moderate water stress with 101-14 MGt and 420A MGt than with Nemadex AB. Surprisingly, the Gravesac was under more stress than the 101-14 MGt. The nitrogen status in the berries was better for Nemadex AB but this was perhaps due to the significantly lower weight of the berries.Rootstock 101-14 MGt attained the highest accumulation of sugars in the berries while 420A MGt allows to preserve higher acidity. The parcel is still young which may explain some of the results. These measures must therefore be continued over the next several years to fully assess the effects of these rootstocks on the development of the vines and the quality of the production under new climatic conditions.

Effect of multi-level and multi-scale spectral data source on vineyard state assessment

Currently, the main goal of agriculture is to promote the resilience of agricultural systems in a sustainable way through the improvement of use efficiency of farm resources, increasing crop yield and quality under climate change conditions. This last is expected to drastically modify plant growth, with possible negative effects, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of Europe on the viticultural sector. In this context, the monitoring of spatial behavior of grapevine during the growing season represents an opportunity to improve the plant management, winegrowers’ incomes, and to preserve the environmental health, but it has additional costs for the farmer. Nowadays, UAS equipped with a VIS-NIR multispectral camera (blue, green, red, red-edge, and NIR) represents a good and relatively cheap solution to assess plant status spatial information (by means of a limited set of spectral vegetation indices), representing important support in precision agriculture management during the growing season. While differences between UAS-based multispectral imagery and point-based spectroscopy are well discussed in the literature, their impact on plant status estimation by vegetation indices is not completely investigated in depth. The aim of this study was to assess the performance level of UAS-based multispectral (5 bands across 450-800nm spectral region with a spatial resolution of 5cm) imagery, reconstructed high-resolution satellite (Sentinel-2A) multispectral imagery (13 bands across 400-2500 nm with spatial resolution of <2 m) through Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach, and point-based field spectroscopy (collecting 600 wavelengths across 400-1000 nm spectral region with a surface footprint of 1-2 cm) in a plant status estimation application, and then, using Bayesian regularization artificial neural network for leaf chlorophyll content (LCC) and plant water status (LWP) prediction. The test site is a Greco vineyard of southern Italy, where detailed and precise records on soil and atmosphere systems, in-vivo plant monitoring of eco-physiological parameters have been conducted.