Berry shrivel causes – summarizing current hypotheses

Wine quality is influenced by grape maturity, typically monitored by measuring sugar content and acidity.

Promoting sustainable agricultural practices is one of the challenges of the last decades. Organic and biodynamic viticulture can be an alternative to intensive viticulture, furthermore contributing to reduction of impact on environment and human health and guaranteeing soil preservation and quality products1. The aim of this experimentation was to evaluate the medium and long-term effects of different agronomic practices in viticulture on nutrient availability and heavy metal accumulation in soil.

During wine alcoholic fermentation, yeasts produce volatile aroma compounds from sugar and nitrogen metabolism. Some of the metabolic pathways leading to these compounds have been known for more than a century.

One of the biggest challenges of agriculture today is maintaining food safety and food quality while providing ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation, pest and disease control, ensuring water quality and supply, and climate regulation. Organic farming was shown to promote biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and is therefore seen as one possibility of environmentally friendly production. Consumers expect organically grown crops to be free from chemical pesticides and mineral fertilizers and often presume that the quality of organically grown crops is different or higher compared to conventionally grown crops. Integrated, organic, and biodynamic viticulture were compared in a replicated field trial in Geisenheim, Germany (Vitis vinifera L. cv. Riesling). Amino acid profiles in juice, grape skin flavonoids, and hydroxycinnamic acids were monitored over three consecutive seasons beginning 7 years after conversion to organic and biodynamic viticulture, respectively. In addition, parameters such as soil nutrient status, yield, vigor, canopy temperature, and water stress were monitored to draw conclusions on reasons for the observed changes. Results revealed that the different sustainable management regimes highly differed in their amino acid profiles in juice and also in their skin flavonol content, whereas differences in the flavanol and hydroxycinnamic acid content were less pronounced. It is very likely that differences in nutrient status and yield determined amino acid profiles in juice, although all three systems showed similar amounts of mineralized nitrogen in the soil. Canopy structure and temperature in the bunch zone did not differ among treatments and therefore cannot account for the observed differences in favonols. A different light exposure of the bunches in the respective systems due to differences in vigor together with differences in berry size and a different water status of the vines might rather be responsible for the increase in flavonol content under organic and biodynamic viticulture.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of drought periods leading to significant impacts on agro‐economic activities