Electromagnetic conductivity mapping and harvest zoning: deciphering relationships between soil and wine quality

Nowadays there are many challenges facing both winegrowers and workers, in other agricultural practices, related to the growing demand for food products, the safety and quality of these products, and the preservation of the environment…

Management of plant-parasitic nematodes is typically focused on preplant fumigation, especially in a vineyard replant scenario. While the data are clear that this practice reduces nematodes immediately after application, which is useful in annually-cropped systems, does it have staying power in perennial cropping systems? The northern root-knot nematode Meloidogyne hapla reduces the overall lifespan and productivity of vineyards, but it does so over a long time period (slow, chronic decline). In two different commercial own-rooted V. vinifera vineyards, both undergoing vineyard replanting, we explored whether preplant fumigation reduced M. hapla densities in soils immediately after application. At one of these locations, we have explored the long-term effect of fumigation by monitoring the site for seven years post fumigation.

The use of multivariate statistics to correlate chemical data to spectral information seems as a valid alternative for the quantification of red wine phenolics. The advantages of these techniques include simplicity and cost effectiveness together with the limited time of analysis required. Although many
publications on this subject are nowadays available in the literature most of them only reported feasibility
studies. In this study 400 samples from thirteen fermentations including five different cultivars plus 150
wine samples from a varying number of vintages were submitted to spectrophotometric and chromatographic phenolic analysis.

In recent years, an undesirable premature “aged” character has been noticed in a growing number of young Riesling wines, associated with extreme weather conditions leading to increased radiation intensity and/ or sun exposure of grapes.

Limited knowledge has been acquired on grapevine roots and rhizosphere processes because of harder access when compared to aerial parts. There is need for new methods to study root behavior in undisturbed field conditions, and relate these effects on canopy and yield. The aim of this multidisciplinary study was to image and quantify spatial-temporal differences in soil-water uptake by genetically different rootstocks and to assess the response of the canopy during drought and rewetting.