Xylem vessel blockages in grape pedicel growing in tropical climate observed by microtomography

Global warming accelerates the loss of acidity in grape berries (Vitis vinifera), a critical parameter for wine quality and sensory freshness.

Pinot noir wines produced under cool-climate conditions often display subtle phenolic expression and high sensitivity to environmental variation, making the identification of regional typicity particularly challenging.

Viticulture currently faces major environmental challenges, mainly due to the intensive use of plant protection products to control downy and powdery mildew diseases, which are being intensified by climate change.

This paper investigates sustainability in European wineries. The growing body of literature on the subject of sustainability underlines the increasing attention on the environmental and social impacts of intensive and irresponsible wine production.

With the aim of producing premium wines, it is admitted that moderate environmental stresses may contribute to the accumulation of compounds of interest in grapes. However the ongoing climate change, with the appearance of more limiting conditions of production is a major concern for the wine industry economic. Will it be possible to maintain the vineyards in place, to preserve the current grape varieties and how should we anticipate the adaptation measures to ensure the sustainability of vineyards? In this context, the question of the responses and adaptation of grapevine to abiotic stresses becomes a major scientific issue to tackle. An abiotic stress can be defined as the effect of a specific factor of the physico-chemical environment of the plants (temperature, availability of water and minerals, light, etc.) which reduces growth, and for a crop such as the vine, the yield, the composition of the fruits and the sustainability of the plants. Water stress is in many minds, but a systemic vision is essential for at least two reasons. The first reason is that in natural environments, a single factor is rarely limiting, and plants have to deal with a combination of constraints, as for example heat and drought, both in time and at a given time. The second reason is that plants, including grapevine, have central mechanisms of stress responses, as redox regulatory pathways, that play an important role in adaptation and survival. Here we will review the most recent studies dealing with this issue to provide a better understanding of the grapevine responses to a combination of environmental constraints and of the underlying regulatory pathways, which may be very helpful to design more adapted solutions to cope with climate change.