Berry shrivel causes – summarizing current hypotheses

Early and accurate grapevine disease detection and surveillance are crucial for optimizing vineyard management practices.

Agriculture, natural resource management and the production and sale of products such as wine are increasingly data-driven activities. Thus, the use of remote and proximal crop and soil sensors to aid management decisions is becoming commonplace and ‘Agtech’ is proliferating commercially; mapping, underpinned by geographical information systems and complex methods of spatial analysis, is widely used…

Balsamic vinegars of Modena (Italy), namely Aceto Balsamico di Modena PGI (AB PGI) and Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena PDO (ABT PDO) are among the most important geographical indication products for Italy. ABT PDO, despite its very limited production, is recognized as one of the most representative Italian artisan gastronomic products, and it is known and commercialized all around the world. The economic value of ABT PDO (“affinato” and “extra-vecchio” types, depending on the aging), prepared following a traditional way and aged for many years in a set of barrels (transferring a certain amount of vinegar from one cask to another in a decreasing “topping up” procedure) is great, when compared to AB industrially prepared with caramel. AB PGI is certainly the most widespread industrial-type vinegar in the world, deriving from low-temperature condensed grape must (or cooked must) mixed with wine vinegar, obtaining balsamic vinegars with a caramel-like taste. Depending on its economic value, ABT PDO is often object of fraud, requiring to fight counterfeit products and imitations.

Climate change imposes increasing restrictions and risks to Mediterranean viticulture. Extreme heat and drought stress events are becoming more frequent which puts in risk sustainability of Mediterranean viticulture. Moreover row crops e.g. grapevine for wine, are increasingly prone to the impact of more intense/longer exposure time to heat stress. The amplified effects of soil surface energy reflectance and conductance on soil-atmosphere heat fluxes can be harmful for leaf and berry physiology.

Environment features and management operations on shoot and leaves modify the canopy during the vegetative season, changing the grapevine microclimate and the ratio between photo synthetic sources (the canopy) and productive sinks (the grapes).