Artificial intelligence (AI)-based protein modeling for the interpretation of grapevine genetic variants

Le travail a le but de contribuer à faire connaître l’influence du milieu, en particulier le climat, sur l’expression génétique de la variété Italia en Sicile.
L’etude a étè effectué durant six années, du 1992 au 1997

The challenges of the century for viticulture relate to coping with climate change and the loss of biodiversity in a downturning socio-economic context. Now more than ever, the vine and wine industry needs to be resilient to maintain and ensure a future for its heritage. An innovation of capital importance, in line with recently published research, deals with developing new methods of training our inherited and newly planted vineyards to better withstand environmental variations such as drought and heatwaves but also unevenly distributed rains and temperatures.

Candida zemplinina (synonym Starmerella bacillaris) is frequently isolated in grape must in different vitivinicultural areas. The enological significance of C. zemplinina strains used in combination with S. cerevisiae has been demonstrated, being wines produced by the above-mixed starter, characterized by higher amounts of glycerol and esters.

Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) is a common viticultural practice for wine grape production. In addition to the potential improvement of water use efficiency, the adoption of this technique favors smaller canopies with higher levels of fruit sun exposure, enhancing quality attributes associated with red wine grapes such as smaller berries with higher tannins and anthocyanins. However, these quality attributes do not necessarily transfer to white wine grapes. The goal of this project was to assess whether partial rootzone drying (PRD) is more suited than RDI to grow high-end white wine grapes in arid climates, especially aromatic varieties, using Riesling as a model.

AIM Astringency is described as a ‘dry puckering‐like sensation’ following consumption of tannins1 that affect consumer preference of foods and beverages, including red wine2. To improve the understanding of astringency, which is a complex interaction due to multiple mechanisms occurring simultaneously, further studies are needed. In this view, oral tribology is considered a useful technique for beverage study to evaluate the thin-film lubrication properties of saliva resulting in oral friction‐related sensations3. The aim of this study was to examine the film behavior of selected protein-based fluids under controlled friction conditions, to understand polyphenol-protein interactions involved in the sensation of astringency.