Physical-mechanical berry skin traits as powerful indicators of resistance to botrytis bunch rot

Water limitation is one of the major threats affecting grapevine production. At the same time, grapevines are highly subjected to different viruses from which Grapevine leafroll associated virus-3 (GLRaV-3) is one of the most widespread ones.

The development of off-flavours in wine distillates, particularly those associated with the tails fraction, is a key issue in the production of high-quality spirits.

Grafting plants uses intrinsic healing processes to join two different plants together to create one functional organism. To further our understanding of the molecular changes occurring during graft union formation in grapevine, we characterized the metabolome and transcriptome of intact and wounded cuttings (with and without buds to represent scions and rootstocks respectively), and homo- and heterografts at 0 and 14 days after wounding/grafting. As over-wintering, dormant plant material was grafted, we also characterized the gene expression changes in the wood during bud burst and spring activation of growth. We observed an asymmetrical pattern of gene expression between above and below the graft interface, auxin and sugar related genes were up-regulated above the graft interface, while genes involved in stress responses were up-regulated below the graft interface.

Around the world, the alcohol content of wine has been steadily increasing; partly as a consequence of climate change, but also due to improvements in viticultural management practices and winemaking techniques [1,2]. Concurrently, market demand for wines with lower alcohol levels has increased as consumers seek to reduce alcohol intake for social and/or health reasons [3]. As such, there is increasing demand for both innovative methods that allow winemakers to produce ‘reduced alcohol wines’ (RAW) and a better understanding of the impact of such methods on the composition of RAW. This study therefore aimed to investigate compositional changes in two red wines resulting from partial alcohol removal following treatment by one such method, involving a combination of reverse osmosis and evaporative perstraction (RO-EP).

Vitis vinifera L. is the most widely cultivated Vitis species which includes numerous cultivars. Owing to their superior quality of grapes, these cultivars were long considered the only suitable for the production of fine wines. However, the lack of resistance genes in V. vinifera against major grapevine pathogens, requires for its cultivation frequent spraying with large amount of fungicides. Thus, the search for alternative and more sustainable methods to control the grapevine pathogens have brought the breeders to focus their attention on other Vitis species. In fact, wild Vitis genotypes present multiple resistance traits against pathogens, such as powdery mildew, downy mildew and phylloxera.