Volatile analysis of Botrytis contaminated grapes using headspace solid phase microextraction GC-MS

The majority of soils used for wine and table grape production in South Africa are notoriously shallow, i.e. they are restricting root penetration.

As an industry that thrives more on, but may also be more affected by, vintage variation and regionality than any other agricultural enterprise, grape and wine production is ever more being impacted challenged by climate change.

The mouthfeel of wine is one of the most important aspects of the organoleptic experience of tasting wine. In wine a great deal is known about certain compositional components and how they impact mouthfeel perception, such as phenolics. But there are other components where little is understood, such as oligosaccharides. Saccharides in general are found in very low concentrations with wine, especially compared to conventional foods. There is very little information about how oligosaccharides influence the mouthfeel perception of wine.

Exposing berries to solar radiation improves most berry composition traits. Many of these effects have been linked to photomorphogenic mechanisms and berry temperature.

In the context of global change, the environmental conditions are expected to be more stressful for viticulture. The choice of the rootstock may play a crucial role to improve the adaptation of viticulture to new biotic and abiotic threats (Ollat et al., 2016). However, the selection of interesting traits in rootstock breeding programs is complex because of the combination of multiple targets in a same ideotype. In this sense, the integration of studies about the genetic architecture for desired biotic and abiotic response traits allow us to identify genomic regions to combine and those with interesting pleiotropic effects.