Teinturier grapes: Valorization as a source of high-value compounds for the Chilean food industry

Climate change has numerous detrimental consequences and creates new challenges for viticulture around the world. Transitory or constant high temperatures frequently associated with an excess of sunlight (UV) can cause a variety of physiological disorders, such as sunburn. Diverse environmental factors and the plant’s response mechanisms to stress determine the symptoms. Grapevine berry sunburn leads to a drastic reduction in yield, and may eventually decline berry quality. Consequently, this poses a significant risk to the winegrowers.

Vines require proper light levels, temperature, and water availability, and climate change is modifying these factors, hampering yield and quality. Despite the large diversity of rootstocks, varieties, and clones, we still lack knowledge of their combined effects and potential role in a warmer and dryer future. Therefore, we aim to characterize some of the existing diversity of rootstocks and genotypes and their interaction at the eco-physiological level, combining stomatal conductance (gs) and chlorophyll a fluorescence analysis.

Grapevine leaves are known to contain different polyphenols such as flavonols, catechins and stilbenes, which are known to act as main contributors for plant defense against pathogens (1). While the composition for some major cultivars has been studied, there is lack of systematic comparison about the content of these compounds in the wide ecodiversity of Vitis vinifera cv. Recent advances in Mass Spectrometry-based Metabolomics allow a wider and more sensitive description of these polyphenols, as instance of those present in leaves (2). Such information could help to better explain leaf traits regarding the development of the leaf or to the plant tolerance to a pathogen. Moreover, these compounds offer appealing applications for human health due to their antioxidant activities.

Climate emergency is going to affect the agricultural suistainability, wine grapes being probably one of the crops more sensitive to environmental constraints. In this context, mitigation strategies such as the revalorization of agricultural wastes are paramount to cope with the current challenges. The use of organic mulches has been reported to reduce soil water evaporation and improve vine water status, reduce soil erosion, and increase soil organic matter with little impact on berry quality. However, less is known about their effects on the microbiote of vineyards.

INTEGRAPE was a European interdisciplinary network for “data integration to maximize the power of omics for grapevine improvement” (CA17111, https://integrape.eu/), funded by the European COST Association from September 2018 to 2022. This Action successfully developed guidelines and tools for data management and promoted the best practices in grapevine omics studies with a holistic future vision of: “Imagine having all data on grapevine accessible in a single place”.