Characterization of vineyard sites for quality wine production using meteorological, soil chemical and physical data

Irrigation of vineyards is a matter of controversial arguments at areas of high quality wine production. Besides, the effects of the water in the plant are closer related to the water availability than to the irrigation regime.

In the context of sustainable viticulture, modern and efficient techniques to determine water status are required to optimize irrigation practices. Proximal techniques such as thermography and spectroscopy have shown promising results. When these techniques are incorporated into mobile systems is possible to evaluate the water status on-the-go, offering the possibility to generate variability maps. However, in most cases, complex protocols of data acquisition and analysis are required. Also, the inherent physiological behaviour of the plants under certain water stress conditions needs to be considered. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of scion-rootstock combinations on the performance of a predefined plant-based method based on proximal near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy.

Water scarcity, high air temperatures, high vapor pressure deficit, and increasing frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events, namely heat waves, exert huge pressure on viticulture, as is the case of Mediterranean climates. Therefore, farmers rely more and more on irrigation to overcome these constraints. Deficit irrigation is a proved strategy to optimize irrigation efficiency and wine quality. The present study intends to demonstrate the application of precision techniques, namely remote sensing derived vegetation indices (VI) and an open source software, SIMDualKc, to compute crop evapotranspiration using the dual crop coefficient approach (Kcb + Ke), for deficit irrigation management.

Combined improvements in sequencing technologies and assembly algorithms have led to staggering improvements in the quality of grape genome assemblies.

Context and purpose of the study. Sparkling wine production is majorly impacted by climate change as sugar accumulation and aromatic development in grapes are often decoupled.