In vitro tissue culture as a tool for Croatian grapevine germplasm management

In winemaking, the appearance of turbidity in white and wine is a serious visual defect, which lowers significantly its commercial value. A major cause of the formation of turbidity in wine is attributed to the presence of temperature-sensitive proteins.

Céline Sparrow a, Christophe Morge a, a SOFRALAB SAS, 79, av. A.A. Thévenet – CS 11031 – 51530 Magenta, France Consumers’ health and security force authorities to limit, in wine as in others food industry products, the concentration in « dangerous » molecules. Therefore the legal limit in heavy metals keeps on decreasing. As per proof EU regulation just decrease the stain concentration in wine from 0,2 to 0,15 mg/l. Certain changes , such as sodium arsenite treatment in vines, disappearance of brass in wineries to the benefit of stainless steel, limit even more the concentration of heavy metals in wines. But the use of copper derivates in vines treatments is difficult to replace. In the case of wine and its elaboration, the problem is even more complex. Indeed, regulation forces the wine producers to control the concentration of certain heavy metals in final wines.

Climate change has been influencing viticulture and changing wine profiles in the past years, and effects are expected to get worse.

Chitosan is a biopolymer industrially obtained from the deacetylation of chitin, the second most abundant polysaccharide on earth, after cellulose. It is extracted from various terrestrial and marine resources, including insects, grasshoppers, shrimps, crabs, lobsters, squids, and fungi. chitosan has a polycationic character due to the free amine groups along its chemical backbone, and depending on its deacetylation degree (DD) and molecular weight (MW), it shows variable properties that differ from those of other natural polysaccharides.

Estimation of vineyard leaf area index (LAI) is an important aspect for the winegrowers. However, tracking and monitoring are difficult tasks due to time constraints. Satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imaging have become a practical monitoring method for LAI. Nevertheless, for a proper LAI determination, the image’s spatial resolution is a key factor, since low-resolution images are incapable of distinguishing between adjacent vines due to the large area covered in each pixel, this leads to misinterpretation or generalisation of vineyard information.