Rootstock influence on xylem embolized vulnerability and scion behavior under severe water deficit

The isUP-AgrO project aims to enhance the capability of ISOPlexis – Centre of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Technology, a research unit from the University of Madeira, an outermost region of Portugal.

From fruit set to ripening, the grape berry mesocarp experiences a wide range of dynamic physical, physiological, and biochemical changes, such as mesocarp cell death (MCD) and hydraulic isolation. The premature occurrence of such events is a characteristic of the Niagara Rosada (NR) variety, utilised as table grapes and winemaking. In our opinion, the onset of ripening would not cause MCD, but a down-regulation of respiratory enzymes during the early loss of cell viability, while maintaining membrane integrity. For this, we investigated three distinct developmental stages (green (E-L33), veraison (E-L35), and ripe (E-L39)) of NR berries by label-free proteomics, enzymatic respiratory activity and outer mesocarp imaging. Cell wall-modifying proteins were found to accumulate differently throughout ripening, while cytoplasmic membranes continue intact.

“The vine and the wine are great mysteries. Only the vine makes us intelligible what is the true flavor of the earth”. Colette. The notion of terroir has always been the basis of the notion of AOC from which it is inseparable. It is moreover the definition of the production zone which was at the start of the attempts to set up the designation of origin, at the beginning of the century, after the phylloxera crisis.

The aim of this work was to reduce the alcohol content of Tempranillo wine. Tempranillo wines were produced by grapes harvested at different ripening dates (August 11 which was 21 oBrix and September 28 with 25 oBrix). At the second date, the Tempranillo wines were elaborated as follows: grapes were destemmed, crushed and collected into 50 L stainless-steel vats. Before preferementative maceration in cold, 50 % (M1) and 70 % (M2) of the must have been replaced by the same percentage of must from the first harvest. In addition, a control wine (C) was performed with only grapes from the second harvest.

In the last years the application of genomic tools to the analysis of gene expression during grape berry development generated a huge amount of transcriptomic data