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

It is quite common nowadays to carry out analyses which allow to control the ageing of spirits that are aged in wood casks. Many control parameters have been previously studied, such as the concentration of different phenolic compounds or the Total Polyphenol Index, in order to better understand the ageing process of wood aged spirits. On the other hand, it is frequent to analyse as a physical parameter the colour of those spirit samples, by stating them as an array of three coordinates from various colour spaces as CIE L*a*b* or CIE L*C*H*.

Measurement of carbon isotope discrimination in berry juice sugars at maturity (δ13C) provides an integrated assessment of water use efficiency (WUE) during the period of berry ripening, and when collected over multiple seasons can be used as an indication of drought stress response. Berry juice δ13C measurements were carried out on 48 different varieties planted in a common garden experiment in Bordeaux, France from 2014 through 2021 and were paired with midday and predawn leaf water potential measurements on the same vines in a subset of six varieties. The aim was to discriminate a large panel of varieties based on their stomatal behaviour and potentially identify hydraulic traits characterizing drought tolerance by comparing δ13C and hydroscapes (the visualisation of plant stomatal behaviour as a response to predawn water potential). Cluster analysis found that δ13C values are likely affected by the differing phenology of each variety, resulting in berry ripening of different varieties taking place under different stress conditions within the same year. We accounted for these phenological differences and found that cluster analysis based on specific δ13C metrics created a classification of varieties that corresponds well to our current empirical understanding of their relative drought tolerances. In addition, we analysed the water potential regulation of the subset of six varieties (using the hydroscape approach) and found that it was well correlated with some δ13C metrics. Surprisingly, a variety’s water potential regulation (specifically its minimum critical leaf water potential under water deficit) was strongly correlated to δ13C values under well-watered conditions, suggesting that base WUE may have a stronger impact on drought tolerance than WUE under water deficit. These results give strong insights on the innate WUE of a very large panel of varieties and suggest that studies of drought tolerance should include traits expressed under non-limiting conditions.

The definition of soil health is complex due to the lack of agreement on adequate indicators and to the high variability of global soils. Nevertheless, it has been widely used as synonymous of soil quality for more than one decade, and there is a consensus warning of scientists that soil quality and biodiversity loss are occurring due to the traditional intensive agricultural practices.
In this work we monitored a set of soil parameters, both physicochemical and microbiological, in an experimental vineyard under three different management and land use systems: a) addition of external organic matter (EOM) to tilled soil; b) no tillage and plant cover between grapevine rows, and c) grapevines planted in rows running down the slope and tilled soil.

According to the OIV Focus 2017 estimating the vine varieties distribution in the world, Italy is the richest grape producing country in terms of varieties.

Tomatoes and Grapes are berries that are genetically related and therefore at least partially their developmental pathways leading to a fleshy fruit should share some of the components. In a sense knowledge obtained from the model plant tomato could be useful for grape and conversely the more amenable tomato can be used to test some hypothesis that would be difficult to obtain in grape. Research in my lab and other labs have led to a better understanding of the molecular genetics mechanisms underlying fruit development and ripening in tomato and more specifically those related to metabolite accumulation that may lead to changes in fruit nutritional and flavor composition. This research has involved the use of genetic variability in natural population, but also biparental population and genetically engineered lines that are easy to develop in tomato tomato but not in grape. NGTs also can be easily implemented in tomato to not only speed up the gene-to-trait but also develop new tomato varieties.