Optimizing disease management in the Rioja wine region: a study on Erisiphe necator and the Gubler-Thomas model

More frequent and extreme temperatures and droughts pose challenges to the wine sector in Mediterranean Europe. Soil is crucial to sustain the equilibrium of ecosystems, economic growth and people’s prosperity worldwide. In viticulture, soils are a major component of the terroir and do influence vine’s growth, yield and berry composition. Soil temperature (ST) affects soil´s physical, chemical and biological processes and also crop growth. The impact of ST becomes even stronger when dealing with row crops such as grapevine, when considering the increased exposition to radiation. However, the impact of ST on crop performance remains poorly described, especially for extreme climatic conditions.

Estimation of the resistance of a wine against oxidation is of great importance for the wine. To that purpose, most of the commonly used chemical assays that are dedicated to estimate the antioxidant (or antiradical) capacity of a wine consist in measuring the capacity of the wine to reduce an oxidative compound or a stable radical.

Produced since 1998, the De Martino Single Vineyard Carmenère is the first Carmenère Icon wine of Chile. The grapes are coming form a plot of 11 ha in Isla de Maipo, where the technicians of the winery have developed knowledge of their work, resulting in 3 levels of quality of the grapes.

Heatwaves or extreme heat events can be particularly harmful to agriculture. Grapevines grown in the Douro winemaking region are particularly exposed to this threat, due to the specificities of the already warm and dry climatic conditions. Furthermore, climate change simulations point to an increase in the frequency of occurrence of these extreme heat events, therefore posing a major challenge to winegrowers in the Mediterranean type climates. The current study focuses on the application of the STICS crop model to assess the potential impacts of heatwaves in grapevine yields over the Douro valley winemaking region. For this purpose, STICS was applied to grapevines using high-resolution weather, soil and terrain datasets over the Douro. To assess the impact of heatwaves, the weather dataset (1989-2005) was artificially modified, generating periods with anomalously high temperatures (+5 ºC), at certain onset dates and with specific durations (from 5 to 9 days). The model was run with this modified weather dataset and results were compared to the original unmodified runs. The results show that heatwaves can have a very strong impact on grapevine yields, strongly depending on the onset dates and duration of the heatwaves. The highest negative impacts may result in a decrease in the yield by up to -35% in some regions. Despite some uncertainties inherent to the current modelling assessment, the present study highlights the negative impacts of heatwaves on viticultural yields in the Douro region, which is critical information for stakeholders within the winemaking sector for planning suitable adaptation measures.

Grapevines have traditionally been grown in semi-arid areas, but viticulture is now compromised by climate change. Therefore, it is necessary to implement environmentally friendly viticulture practices to adapt grapevines to current climatic conditions. In this context, organic mulches offer many benefits, such as reduced soil erosion and increased organic matter, soil water content and crop productivity. However, these practices must not compromise grape and wine quality. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect on wine physicochemical and phenolic composition and sensorial properties of different soil management practices on the vine row. Over four years, five soil treatments were examined in two different vineyards.