GiESCO 2019 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 GiESCO 9 GiESCO 2019 9 Late leaf removal does not consistently delay ripeningin semillon in Australia

Late leaf removal does not consistently delay ripeningin semillon in Australia

Abstract

Context and purpose of the study ‐ An advancement of grapevine phenological development has been observed worldwide in the last two decades. In South Australia this phenomenon is even more accentuated since grapevine is often grown in a hot climate. The main consequences are earlier harvests at higher sugar levels which also result in more alcoholic wines. These are deemed undesirable for the Australian wine industry with consumer preferences shifting towards lower alcohol wines. Vineyard practices can be implemented to control and delay ripening. Amongst them, apical late leaf removal has been successfully applied in Europe to delay ripening by up to two weeks in Sangiovese, Aglianico and Riesling. In those studies, no negative effects were observed on grape colour, phenolics and on the carbohydrate storage capacity of the vines. To date, this technique has not been studied in Australia. In this study late leaf removal, apical to the bunch zone was applied to the variety Semillon for four seasons and compared to an untreated control.

Material and methods ‐ The study was carried out for four consecutive seasons starting in 2015 in the variety Semillon at the Waite Campus, University of Adelaide, Australia. Yield, yield components and berry chemistry (total soluble solids, titratable acidity, pH and total phenolics) were all assessed during the study.


Results ‐ Results showed that despite the removal of up to 30% of the vine’s canopy, the technique was effective in delaying ripening only in one of the four seasons. No differences were observed in yield components and berry and wine chemistry between the treated and untreated vines. These results suggest that the technique might not be a feasible strategy to delay ripening in Semillon grown in a hot climate in Australia.

Download the PDF

DOI:

Publication date: June 19, 2020

Issue: GIESCO 2019

Type: Article

Authors

Roberta DE BEI (1), Xiaoyi WANG (1), Lukas PAPAGIANNIS (1), Massimiliano COCCO (1,3), Patrick O’BRIEN (1), Marco ZITO (1,4), Jingyun OUYANG (1), Sigfredo FUENTES (5), Matthew GILLIHAM (1,2), Steve TYERMAN (1,2) and Cassandra COLLINS (1)

(1) The University of Adelaide, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Waite Research Institute, PMB 1 Glen Osmond, 5064, South Australia. Australia
(2) ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Waite Research Institute, PMB 1 Glen Osmond, 5064, South Australia, Australia
(3) The University of Sassari, Department of Agriculture, Viale Italia 39, 07100, Sassari, Italy
(4) Istituto di Scienze della Vita, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Piazza dei Martiri della Libertà 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy
(5) The University of Melbourne, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences. Parkville, 3010. Victoria, Australia

Contact the author

Keywords

Leaf removal, delayed ripening, canopy management, leaf area, Semillon

Tags

GiESCO 2019 | IVES Conference Series

Citation

Related articles…

Environment friendly nutrition supplying and soil cultivation methods applicable in the upper zone of hillside vineyards

Somló is Hungary’s smallest wine district, however one of the best producing white wines. The majority of vineyard areas are located on the slopes of Somló-hill, situated at the point where the Kisalföld meets Bakonyalja

Read More

The terroir of winter hardiness: a three year investigation of spatial variation in winter hardiness, water status, yield, and berry composition of riesling in the niagara region using geomatic technologies

Grapevine winter hardiness is a key factor in vineyard success in many cool climate wine regions. Winter hardiness may be governed by several factors in addition to extreme weather conditions – e.g. soil factors (texture, chemical composition, moisture, drainage), vine water status, and yield– that are unique to each site.

Read More

Comparison of destructive and non-destructive measurements of table grape berries to assess quality parameters using spectroscopy

The quality of table grapes is critically influenced by several parameters, including sugar content, acidity, firmness, and overall appearance.

Read More

Monitoring small-scale alcoholic fermentations using a portable FTIR-ATR spectrometer and multivariate analysis

Although some wine production processes still rely on post-production evaluation and off-site laboratory analysis, the new winemaking industry is aware of a need for a better knowledge of the process to improve the properties of the final product. Thus, more and more wineries are interested in incorporating quality-by-design (QbD) strategies instead of postproduction testing because of the possibility to early detect deviations in fermentation or any other wine process. This would allow to detect unwanted situations and eventually to ‘readjust’ the process, thus minimizing rejects.

Read More

From genes to vineyards: system biology and new breeding technologies for water stress tolerance in grapevines

One of the major challenges for food security and sovereignty is to produce stress-tolerant plants without introducing foreign DNA, because the legislative process, that bans transgenics, challenges us to find new solutions for producing plants that can survive the drought. To achieve this goal, we need to identify genes that can be modified to improve stress tolerance in plants. In this work, we present an online tool for exploring the transcriptome of grapevines under water stress, which is one of the most important abiotic stresses affecting viticulture. The tool is based on a comprehensive collection of rna-seq data from 997 experiments, covering four different tissues (leaf, root, berry, and shoot), various levels of water stress, and diverse genetic backgrounds (cultivars and rootstocks) with different levels of tolerance to water stress.

Read More