Understanding the expression of gene families involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis during berry ripening: Tannat as a case study

Moderate wine consumption – with the meals – represents one of the beneficial components of the traditional mediterranean diet (med diet) and a positive item in the med diet score [1,2, 3]. The med diet is considered one of the best diets in the world and the world health organisation (who) identified this eating pattern as an effective strategy to prevent non-communicable diseases (ncd), since it is associated with lower disease occurrence and all-cause mortality [4] . Numerous well-conducted epidemiological studies have also reported that light-to-moderate intake of wine/alcoholic beverages is not only related to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, but also to all-cause mortality.

One cultivar could produce distinct wines with typical properties and qualities different depending on its cultivated and its mesoclimatic conditions.

The ecological conditions (climatic factors and soil) during the whole year, and especially before flowering and during the time of flowering, have a great influence on the functional ability of pollen, the pollination, the fecundation and the yielding potential of the cultivars of grapevine.

The Douro Demarcated Region, in Northern Portugal, offers outstanding wines with unique characteristics. Due to the today’s globalized marketplace, local producers often need to further develop their cultivation techniques to remain competitive. The Association of Viticultural Development in the Douro Valley (ADVID) works as a unit of experimentation, offering services and training to meet the demands of the Douro’s vitiviniculturists.

Recent advances in phenomics and transcriptomics have the enhanced capacity for understanding how clonally propagated perennial crops like grapevines respond to their environments seasonally and over the course of multiple years. Because most grapevines are grafted, above-ground grapevine traits reflect scion genotype and its interaction with the local environment. In addition, traits expressed by the scion reflect rootstock genotype and how that rootstock is interacting with its environment seasonally and across years. To investigate rootstock x environment interaction on shoot systems in grafted grapevines we characterized comprehensive phenotypic variation in an experimental vineyard in Mount Vernon, Missouri, USA where the grapevine cultivar ‘Chambourcin’ is growing on its own roots and is grafted to three different rootstocks (‘1103P’, ‘3309C’, ‘SO4’).