From soil to canopy, the diversity of adaptation strategies  to abiotic constraints in grapevine

Ecological resources represent vegetation factors, or even production factors, in quantitative expression. These, used by plants, transformed and organized according to their genetic program, become the material components of biomass. Subsequently, the ecological resources can be used as synthetic indicators of the ecological supply, necessary for the analysis of favorability for the understanding of ecosystems.

Trellis systems are selected in wine grape vineyards to mainly maximize vineyard yield and maintain berry quality. This study was conducted in 2020 and 2021 to evaluate six commonly utilized trellis systems including a vertical shoot positioning (VSP), two relaxed VSPs (VSP60 and VSP80), a single high wire (SH), a high quadrilateral (HQ), and a guyot (GY), combined with three levels of irrigation regimes based on different crop evapotranspiration (ETc) replacements, including a 25% ETc, 50% ETc, and 100% ETc. The results indicated SH yielded the most fruits and accumulated the most total soluble solids (TSS) at harvest in 2020, however, it showed the lowest TSS in the second season. In 2020, SH and HQ showed higher concentrations in most of the anthocyanin derivatives compared to the VSPs. Similar comparisons were noticed in 2021 as well. SH and HQ also accumulated more flavonols in both years compared to other trellis systems. Overall, this study provides information on the efficacy of trellis systems on grapevine yield and berry flavonoid accumulation in a currently warming climate.

Global climate change is exerting a notable influence on viticulture sector and grape composition. The increase in temperature and the changes in rainfall pattern are causing a gap between phenolic and technological grape maturities [1]. As a result, the composition of grapes at harvest time and, consequently, that of wines are being affected, especially with regards to phenolic composition. Hence, wine quality is decreasing due to changes in the organoleptic properties, such as color and astringency, making necessary to implement new adaptive technologies in wineries to modulate these properties in order to improve wine quality.

Grapevine pruning is one of the most important practices in the vineyards. Winegrowers use it to provide the vines the shape needed, or to maintain it once achieved, and also to balance vegetative growth and fruit production. In the last decades, careless pruning has been blamed, among other factors, as responsible of the vineyard decay that is been observed even in young vines. However, to our knowledge, there is a lack of systematic research trying to elucidate to which extent the pruning method used affects plant development or its susceptibility to grapevine trunk diseases (GTD). Within this context, the aim of this work is to study the influence of different pruning method strategies on the development of field-planted young vines.

The use of cover crops (CCs) is widely proposed as an alternative to traditional soil management in vineyards to exploit a wide range of ecosystem services. The presence of a CC in the inter-row space is known to control spontaneous vegetation in vineyards, primarily through the biomass of the sown crop, which competes with other spontaneous species for soil resources.