Molecular characterization of a variegated grapevine mutant cv Bruce’s Sport

Solo attraverso un adeguato intervento di estirpazione e reimpianto dei vigneti è possibile preservare, adeguare e valorizzare il patrimonio viticolo e le produzioni che da esso derivano.
Il reimpianto dei vigneti è pertanto da intendersi come una normale pratica agricola, alla pari della rimonta di stalla in campo zootecnico, ma può assumere toni problematici quando, come si verifica adesso in Toscana per una serie di circostanze legate alla profonda trasfor­mazione della viticoltura avvenuta negli ultimi 30 anni, troppi impianti giungono contem­poraneamente a fine ciclo produttivo e devono essere rinnovati.

Agriculture is one of the largest contributors to environmental pollution and causing significant impacts on human health, ecosystems, and resource availability.

Context and purpose of the study. Epidermal Patterning Factors are a family of small peptides that are highly conserved in the plant kingdom and are involved in several physiological and developmental processes.

In a context of reducing herbicide use, the most part of French vineyards are developing permanent grass cover crops on inter-rows alleys, while under the row chemical weeding remains the general case. The setting up of a controlled grass cover crop under the vine row could be a complementary alternative to mechanical weeding – which one is very restrictive – interesting from a technical and economical point of view. The present study aimed at assessing agronomic impacts of grass cover crop under the row in different climatic conditions and production objectives.

Climate influence on grapevine physiology is prevalent and this influence is only expected to increase with climate change. Although governed by a general determinism, climate influence on grapevine physiology may present variations according to the terroir. In addition, these site-specific differences are likely to be enhanced when climate influence is studied using farm data. Indeed, farm data integrate additional sources of variation such as a varying representativity of the conditions actually experienced in the field. Nevertheless, there is a real challenge in valuing farm data to enable grape growers to understand their own terroir and consequently adapt their practices to the local conditions. In such a context, this article proposes a framework to site-specifically study climate influence on grapevine physiology using farm data. It focuses on improving the analysis of time series of weather data. The analytical framework includes the synchronization of time series using site-specific thermal indices computed with an original method called Extended Growing Degree Days (eGDD). Synchronized time series are then analyzed using a Bayesian functional Linear regression with Sparse Steps functions (BLiSS) in order to detect site-specific periods of strong climate influence on yield development. The article focuses on temperature and rain influence on grape yield development as a case study. It uses data from three commercial vineyards respectively situated in the Bordeaux region (France), California (USA) and Israel. For all vineyards, common periods of climate influence on yield development were found. They corresponded to already known periods, for example around veraison of the year before harvest. However, the periods differed in their precise timing (e.g. before, around or after veraison), duration and correlation direction with yield. Other periods were found for only one or two vineyards and/or were not referred to in literature, for example during the winter before harvest.