Preliminary steps of a protocol to isolate transcription factors bound to a specific DNA locus in grapevine using CRISPR-dCas9 system

Over the past 70 years, scientific literature has consistently illustrated the advantageous effects of arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (AMF) on plant growth and stress tolerance. Recent reviews not only reaffirm these findings but also underscore the pivotal role of AMF in ensuring the sustainability of viticulture. In fact, various companies actively promote commercial inoculants based on AMF as biofertilizers or biostimulants for sustainable viticulture. However, despite the touted benefits of these products, the consistent effectiveness of AMF inoculants in real-world field conditions remains uncertain.

One of the most important effects of climate change in wine-growing areas is the advance of phenological stages, especially concerning early berry ripening. In the hottest seasons, this results in a lack of synchrony between sugar and phenolic ripeness. In order to cope with this fact, a general effort is being made by researchers and growers aiming at delaying ripening through different strategies. One of the proposed approaches is the application of elicitors. This study aims to assess the effect at the transcriptomic level of the application of three hormone- and natural-based elicitors in Tempranillo.

The rising trend of moderate wine consumption as a part of a healthy lifestyle promotes white wines with higher phenolic content because of their bioactive properties. Duration and temperature of the maceration process have a marked impact on the content and composition of wine phenolics. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of applying maceration processes of different durations and temperature on total phenolic content and flavan-3-ol compounds concentration of Malvazija istarska (Vitis vinifera L.) wines, an autochthonous Croatian white grape variety. Vinification took place at the Institute of Agriculture and Tourism (Poreč) where pre-fermentative two days cryomaceration treatment at 8 °C (CRYO), seven days maceration treatment at 16 °C (M7), and prolonged post-fermentative maceration treatments at 16 °C for 14 days (M14), 21 day (M21), and 42 days (M42) were studied and compared to non-maceration control treatment (C). Total phenolic content was determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu colorimetric method using a UV/VIS spectrophotometer and the results were expressed as gallic acid equivalents (mg/L GAE).

The disruptive effect exerted by high-power ultrasound (US) on plant cell walls, natural barriers to the diffusion of compounds of interest during the maceration of red wines, is established as the reason behind the chromatic improvement that its treatment causes. However, sometimes this improvement is not observed, especially with short maceration times. The presence of a high quantity of suspended cell wall material, which formation is favored by the sonication, could be the cause of this lack of positive results since this cell wall material has a high affinity for phenolic compounds.

Globalisation and climate change have radically transformed world wine production upsetting the established order of wine ecologies. Ecological risks and the future of traditional agricultural systems are widely debated in anthropology, but very little is understood of the particular challenges posed by climate change to viticulture which is seen by many as the canary in the coalmine of global agriculture. Moreover, wine as a globalised embedded commodity provides a particularly telling example for the study of climate change having already attracted early scientific attention. Studies of climate change in viticulture have focused primarily on the production of systematic models of adaptation and vulnerability, while the human and cultural factors, which are key to adaptation and sustainable futures, are largely missing. Climate experts have been unanimous in recognising the urgent need for a better understanding of the complex dynamics that shape how climate change is experienced and responded to by human systems. Yet this call has not yet been addressed. Climate ethnography, coined by the anthropologist Susan Crate (2011), aims to bridge this growing disjuncture between climate science and everyday life through the exploration of the social meaning of climate change. It seeks to investigate the confrontation of its social salience in different locations and under different environmental guises (Goodman 2018: 340). By understanding how wine producers make sense of the world (and the environment) and act in it, it proposes to focus on the co-production of interdisciplinary knowledge by identifying and foreshadowing problems (Goodman 2018: 342; Goodman & Marshall 2018). It seeks to offer an original, transformative and contrasted perspective to climate change scenarios by investigating human agency -individual or collective- in all its social, political and cultural diversity. An anthropological approach founded on detailed ethnographies of wine production is ideally placed to address economic, social and cultural disruptions caused by the emergence of these new environmental challenges. Indeed, the community of experts in environmental change have recently called for research that will encompass the human dimension and for more broad-based, integrated through interdisciplinarity, useful knowledge (Castree & al 2014). My paper seeks to engage with climate ethnography and discuss what it brings to the study of wine environmental futures while exploring the limitations of the anthropological environmental approach.