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

Grape seeds account for around 5% of the weight of the whole grape berry, representing approximately 40%-50% of the solid by-products that the different wine industries generate during the winemaking process.

Bud death due to cold damage is a recurrent and major economic issue with Vitis vinifera L. in the Northeastern U.S. winegrowing regions. Primary buds – and sometimes secondary and tertiary buds – are often damaged by fluctuating temperatures in the winter and early spring. To maintain balanced vegetative and reproductive growth of a vine, pruning practices need to be adjusted to account for bud damage. Conventional bud damage assessment requires growers to sample canes/spurs, cut nodes with a razor blade, and then visually assess bud damage. This process is laborious and becomes a major barrier for damage-compensated pruning decision-making, leading to too few live buds per vine and the associated excessive vigor and low yield that result. The overarching goal of this study was to develop an active thermographic system for non-destructive detection of bud damage in the vineyard.

Tropical wines have been produced in the São Francisco river Valley thirty years ago, in the Northeast of Brazil. The main grape cultivar used for red tropical wines is ‘Syrah’, but wines have presented fast evolution, if they were made in the first or second semester, due to the high values of pH in grapes and wines and high climate temperatures.

Study the influence of sample preparation methods on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profiling for fermentative beverages by GCxGC-TOFMS analysis. METHODS: Five common sample preparation methods were tested on pooled red wine, white wine, cider, and beer. Studied methods were DHS, Liquid-liquid extraction, mSBSE, SPE and SPME. VOCs were analyzed by GCxGC-TOFMS followed by data analysis with ChromaTOF. RESULTS: The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profiling results were very dependent on the sample preparation methods.

Agriculture worldwide is threatened by climate change. In particular, declining water resource availability combined with increasing water demand is a key challenge in many rainfed areas, where irrigation appears to be a straightforward adaptation option. In this context, assessing the impacts of irrigation adoption on farm yields and incomes is a necessary step to reflect on the impact of both ex-post and ex-ante policies.