The role of vine trunk height in delaying grape ripening: insights for viticultural adaptation strategies

Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC) has emerged as a powerful analytical technique for unraveling the volatile composition of complex matrices. This work will present three applications of GCxGC Tof-MS to the oenological field, aimed to identify novel biomarkers to be used in the quality control process of the wine industry. Comprehensive mapping of volatile compounds was conducted in a large sample of 70 sparkling wines, produced by 48 different wineries across 6 vintages and representative of the two main production areas for premium Italian sparkling wines (Franciacorta (FC) and Trentodoc (TN)), using HS-SPME followed by GCxGC-Tof-MS and multivariate analysis. Selection and identification of 196 putative biomarkers allowed clear separation of sparkling wines from FC and TN.

There is currently a real need to improve and speed-up phenotyping in experimental set-ups to increase the number of modalities studied. Accurate information acquisition on plant status with high-throughput capacity is the main appeal of on-board systems.
A proximal sensing camera for a proxy of winter pruning weight was tested. We estimated the shoot volume of the vine by image analysis using algorithms that integrate the local shoot section area estimate along the shoot skeleton obtained by a morphological distance transform.
The study was carried out on the GreffAdapt experimental vineyard in Guyot simple training and a canopy management using vertical trellising. The planting density is 6250 vines/ha with a row spacing of 1.6×1m. Five scions grafted onto 55 rootstocks are present and the combination rootstock×scion is different every five plants.

The wine industry, a key sector for the European Union’s economy, exhibits significant energy consumption, amounting to approximately 1,750 million kWh annually within this geographic context, with major contributions from Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal (Fuentes Pila et al., 2015).

Context and purpose of the study ‐ Crop load management by cluster thinning can improve ripening and the concentration of key metabolites for grape and wine quality. However, little work has been done on testing the impact of crop load management on terpene content of white grapes. The goal of the study was to assess if by reducing crop load via cluster thinning growers can increase terpene concentration of grapes, as well as to test if the timing of thinning application affects terpene concentration.

One of the major determinants of wine quality is the aroma. Wine aroma is the human perception of the matrix of grape and yeast derived volatiles and their interaction that contribute to flavour wine. Most common are higher alcohols, ester and aldehydes. In previous studies the formation of characteristic volatile compounds have been linked to the metabolism of branched-chain and aromatic amino acids
(BCAAs) in synthetic grape must. Here we report on an investigation to assess the impact of the initial amino acid concentration on the production of aroma compounds by the industrial yeast VIN13 grown in both synthetic and real grape musts.