Genetic prospecting of rainfed viticulture in the region with the largest cultivated area in Chile

Vine growth circumstances are becoming warmer and drier because of climate change. Higher temperatures advance ripening to a point in the season less conducive to the production of fine wine, while drought reduces yields (Van Leeuwen et al., 2019). Several wine-producing regions around the world have already recognized threats to their viticultural viability (Santos et al., 2020). An economical and cost-effective strategy for adaptation is the employment of late-ripening, drought-resistant plant material (varieties, clones, and rootstocks).

Wine acidity is a parameter of great importance that influences different quality factors of the product such as biological stability or organoleptic characteristics. In the current context of climate change, which gives rise to wines with higher levels of ethanol and lower acidity, the biological acidification with yeast species such as Lachancea thermotolerans could be a solution.
In this work, the effect of the inoculation of different L. thermotolerans on the acidity of wine was studied.

The utilization of non-Saccharomyces yeasts in the wine industry has increased significantly in recent years. Alternative species need commonly be employed in combination with Saccharomyces cerevisiae to avoid stuck fermentation, or microbial spoilage. The employment of more than one yeast starter can lead to interactions between different species with an impact on the outcome of wine fermentation. Previous studies[1] demonstrated that S. cerevisiae elicits transcriptional responses with both shared and species-specific features in co-culture with other yeast species.

The appearance of the Phylloxera pest in the 19th century in Europe caused dramatical damages in grapevine diversity. To mitigate these losses, grapevine growers resorted to using crosses of different Vitis species, such as 110 Richter (110R) (V. berlandieri x V. rupestris), which has been invaluable for studying adaptations to stress responses in vineyards. Recently, a high quality chromosome scale assembly of 110R was released, but the available gene models were predicted without using as evidence transcriptional sequences obtained from roots, that are crucial organs in rootstock, and they may express certain genes exclusively. Therefore, we employed RNA sequencing reads of 110R roots under different stress conditions to predict new gene models in each haplotype of 110R under different stresses.

Reducing sugar accumulation in grape (Vitis vinifera L.) berries may be a way to mitigate the effect of climate change. Managing canopy and crop load is an effective way to do so, however, reducing canopy size has been demonstrated to induce undesirable effects on anthocyanins. The aim of this study was to test if an application of exogenous ABA on the grape berries of defoliated vines (⅔ of the leaves removed) can result in slower sugar accumulation while maintaining grape and wine quality. An experiment with defoliation and exogenous ABA application on directly on clusters (factorial design 2×2) was performed with ‘Tempranillo’ fruit-bearing cuttings.