Cumulative effects of repeated drought stress on berry composition, and phenolic profile: Field experiment insights

Wine industry has to develop new strategies to reduce the negative impact of global climate change in wine quality while trying to mitigate its own contribution to this climate change. The term “ecosystem services”, whose use has been recently increasing, refers to the benefits that human beings can obtain from the interactions between the different living beings that coexist in an environment or system. The management of biodiversity in the vineyard has a positive impact on this crop. It has recently been reported that practices such as plant cover can reduce the occurrence of pests, increase pollination of the vine, improve plant performance1 and affect the phenolic content of grapes.2

Drought is considered to be the predominant factor both for determining the geographic distribution of vegetation and for restricting crop yields in agriculture. Furthermore

Drought and heat stress will pose challenges for the future of viticulture and wine quality, as grapevine biological processes are pushed beyond their optimum conditions. Efforts are increasing to study and predict the effects of drought spells and heatwaves on grapevine physiology and resulting harvest quality. This calls for the development of adequate systems to induce and manipulate the required stress, especially in open field trials where conditions are more difficult to control. We present a semi-controlled system for studying drought and heat stress in grapevine in the field.

This report examines product quality assurance issues arising when technological aids and food additives are utilized in winemaking.

The objective this work has been study the possibility of partially or completely replacing sulphur in the winemaking of white wines through the use of the prefermentative saturation of musts with CO2.