Water is the most abundant active compound in wine!

Climate change is having a profound effect on viticulture by altering the conditions under which vines grow, leading to increased water stress and earlier harvests, which in turn affect the quality and character of wines [1].

The Southern Oregon American Viticultural Area (AVA) consists of the Applegate Valley, Rogue Valley, Umpqua Valley, Elkton Oregon, and Red Hills of Douglas County sub-AVAs (Figure 1) that are some of the many winegrape producing regions found within the intermountain valleys along the west coast of the United States.

Le Muscat de Frontignan est bien connu pour ses fortes teneurs en composés terpéniques et par l’odeur florale et fruitée que ces composés confèrent aux vins qui en sont issus (1,2).

In a highly competitive worldwide market, a current challenge for the beverage sector is to diversify the range of products and to offer wines and spirits with typicity and character.

During alcoholic fermentation, wine yeasts generate a large variety of volatile metabolites, including acetate esters, ethyl fatty acid esters, higher alcohols, volatile fatty acids and volatile sulfur compounds that contribute to the aroma profile of wine. These molecules, refered as fermentative aromas, are the most abundant volatile compounds synthetized by yeasts and the metabolic pathways involved in their formation have been well characterized. Furthermore, other molecules with a major organoleptic impact may be produced during wine fermentation including terpene derivatives. However, little information is available on the contribution of yeasts to the formation of these molecules, in particular on their ability to synthethise de novo the terpens derivatives or to produce hydrolytic enzymes involved in the release of varietal precursors.

Carbaryl is an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor-type insecticide used for pest control on grapevine. We repeatedly observed the occurrence of interveinal leaf necrosis following carbaryl spray application in a Vitis rupestris x Vitis riparia F1 hybrid progeny vineyard. Spray applications induced necrosis in this progeny under both Missouri and New York field conditions an approximate one-to-one sensitive-to-insensitive segregation ratio and with 42% concordance. Results of subsequent in vitro experiments established causality between carbaryl treatment and leaf necrosis and confirmed the pattern of segregation observed in the field. We consistently map this phenotype to a major QTL on chromosome 16 of the female parent V. rupestris ‘B38’ regardless of whether we used field or in vitro-generated phenotype data.