Coping with extreme climatic events: some lessons from recent work on grapevine under heat peak

Plant genetic resources have sustained human societies throughout history. Through selection and propagation, humans have shaped plant gene pools to enhance productivity, local adaptation, and diversity of products across continents.

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.

Nous avons peu d’informations sur les cépages cultivés dans la région de la Campania (sud de l’ltalie). En particulier insuffisant sont les études sur les besoins thermiques de tels cépages.

La région viticole de San Juan (Argentine) est marquée par des températures très élevées et des variations diurnes faibles. La valorisation de la connaissance de cet environnement et de ses interactions avec le fonctionnement de la vigne et le lien au vin passent par l’étude de ses terroirs et de leur caractérisation. Le point de départ de ce travail est l’étude des zones mésoclimatiques aptes à la culture de la vigne de la Province de San Juan et à la caractérisation des sols de cette même région. L’objectif est de définir le potentiel vitivinicole des zones considérées.

L’AOC Ribeiro est la plus ancienne de Galice (NO de l’Espagne), avec une aire de production potentielle de 3.200 ha. Situé dans la région centrale de la vallée du Miño, le Ribeiro a un climat de tipe maritime tempéré qui se correspond avec la zone climatique II de Winkler.