Depletion Of Vine-Shoots Phenolic Composicion After Being Used As An Enological Tool For Wine Differentiation

In 2010, the OIV adopted a resolution that defines ‘terroir’. The OIV definition understands terroir as the result of the interactions between the physical specificities of a space and human labor, with an emphasis on the subsequently produced collective knowledge (OIV-VITI 333-2010); by doing so, it alludes to the social and cultural dimensions of terroir.

[English version below]

On a étudié l’effet de l’orientation des rameaux sur les paramètres physiologiques, végétatifs et reproductif durant deux saisons de croissance (2002/2003 et 2003/2004) dans la région de Stellenbosch dans une vignoble du cépage Merlot sur 99R conduite en espalier et taillé à cordon coursonné. Les vignes étaient espacées 2.7 x 1.5 m.

La mise en valeur d’un terroir au travers du vin signifie dans un premier temps le respect du cahier des charges de l’A.O.C correspondante. Dans un second temps, elle sous-entend d’être à l’écoute des évolutions scientifiques, techniques et sociétales afin de satisfaire une production plus respectueuse de l’environnement et de la santé des hommes. Les recherches effectuées par l’Unité Vigne et Vin du centre INRA d’Angers ont débouché sur le concept d’UTB, Unité Terroir de Base (R.Morlat). UTB définit une aire de terrain ou le fonctionnement de la vigne est homogène en tous points.

In recent years, consumer awareness for consuming healthy and environmental sustainability products has considerably increased [1]. In an ever-changing and highly competitive environment such as the wine sector, production of wines without sulfites, or biodynamic, organic or vegan wines, has experienced an important increase to meet the new needs of consumers [2,3]. Beyond these categories of regulated products, a new concept has emerged: natural wines (NW), for which there is not an established definition or legal regulation. Rather, producers have a personal idea of naturalness under the premise of applying minimal intervention from grape to wine production [4]. In this context, it is hypothesized that self-defined natural wines are different from conventional wines (CW) in their sensory and chemical profile. The predicament of natural wine is based on anecdotic declarations and assumes that minimal intervention guarantees the production of wines with organoleptic properties able to express the “terroir” and thus promote wine diversity, plurality and sensory typicity against the risk of standardization of CW.

Epidermal Patterning Factors are a class of cysteine rich peptides known to be involved in many developmental processes. The role of EPF1, EPF2 and EPFL9 in controlling leaf stomata formation has been well described in model plants and cereals, and recently also in grapevine, while little is known about their activity in other organs. The aim of our study is to investigate whether VviEPFL9-2 can have a specific biological function in grapevine roots, where it resulted to be expressed. As grapevine is cultivated in the form of a grafted plant, we focused our study on the commonly used rootstock Kober 5BB (Vitis berlandieri x Vitis riparia). VviEPFL9-2 was edited in Kober 5BB plants using Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation of embryogenic calli and the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. The phenotypic evaluation in greenhouse indicated that, as expected, the leaves of knock-out (KO) plants have a significant lower stomatal density compared to WT, associated with a lower stomatal conductance.