Health benefits of wine industry by-products

The study of wine evolution during barrel aging is an important aspect of wine quality. Our previous works have shown that wine metabolome monitoring by

1H-NMR approaches allows determining the impact of different winemaking processes including traitements using enzymes or finning agents [1].

The elemental composition (the ionome) of grape leaves is an important indicator of nutritional
health, but its genetic architecture has received limited scientific attention. In this study, we
analyzed the leaf ionome of 131 interspecific F1 hybrid progeny from a Vitis rupestris (♀) X Vitis
riparia (♂) cross. The progeny were replicated in New York, South Dakota, Southwest Missouri ad Central Missouri, and the concentration of 20 elements were measured in their leaves at
three different phenological stages during the growing season. In leaves collected at the apical node at anthesis, elemental concentrations correlated in a consistent manner (p < 0.05) across all four geographic locations. In subsequent phenological stages, elemental ratios in the apical-node leaves remained consistent across the South Dakota and New York sites, but not across the Missouri sites. In leaves collected at the basal and middle nodes, correlations varied greatly across all locations.

The notion of «terroir» refers to the link between the composition, quality and taste of a wine, on the one hand, and its place of origin, on the other. It involves, among other things, the signature of soil elements, as well as the influence of climatic conditions and plant material used. The composition of the wine is also influenced by the winemaking, storage and bottling processes. We were lucky enough to have a time series of the same champagne, from the end of the first world war to the present. On this exceptional time series, we followed, with the most advanced methods, all the elemental signatures by isotopic multi-dilution, the evolution of the isotopic ratios of heavy elements with very high precision of Sr, Pb, B and Cu.

Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) is a common viticultural practice for wine grape production. In addition to the potential improvement of water use efficiency, the adoption of this technique favors smaller canopies with higher levels of fruit sun exposure, enhancing quality attributes associated with red wine grapes such as smaller berries with higher tannins and anthocyanins. However, these quality attributes do not necessarily transfer to white wine grapes. The goal of this project was to assess whether partial rootzone drying (PRD) is more suited than RDI to grow high-end white wine grapes in arid climates, especially aromatic varieties, using Riesling as a model.

The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica Newman, is considered one of the most harmful organisms due to its ability to feed on more than 300 plant species. Symptoms indicative of adult beetles include feeding holes in host plants extending to skeletonization of leaves when population numbers are high. The vine is one of the species most affected by this beetle. However, the damaged plants, even if with difficulty, manage to recover, bringing the bunches of grapes to ripeness.