Application of remote sensing by unmanned aerial vehicles to map variability in Ontario Riesling and Cabernet Franc vineyards

Wine industry has to develop new strategies to reduce the negative impact of global climate change in wine quality while trying to mitigate its own contribution to this climate change. The term “ecosystem services”, whose use has been recently increasing, refers to the benefits that human beings can obtain from the interactions between the different living beings that coexist in an environment or system. The management of biodiversity in the vineyard has a positive impact on this crop. It has recently been reported that practices such as plant cover can reduce the occurrence of pests, increase pollination of the vine, improve plant performance1 and affect the phenolic content of grapes.2

Quercetin (Q) is present in grape in form of glycosides and as aglycone. These compounds are extracted from grape skins during winemaking. In wines, following the hydrolysis reactions, the amount of quercetin aglycon can exceed its solubility value. Unfortunately, a threshold solubility concentration for quercetin in wine is not easy to determine because it depends on wine matrix (Gambuti et al., 2020).

The characterization of « the soil effect » in vine growing is often limited to the description of the physical components of the terroir. Many works were done in this direction and corresponded to geological, pedological or agronomical approaches. However, if the physical environment influences the vine and its grapes, its effect becomes limited at the scale of exploitation. Thus, it could be important to consider how the viticulturist « translated » the potential.

Evidence indicates that climate change affects the environment, human health, and well-being via drought, increasing greenhouse effect, and climatic catastrophes. As the wine sector is also negatively affected by climate change, the role of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies is important in wine production. One example of an adaptation policy is the implementation of grapevine genetics (duchene, 2016), while organic farming may be used as an approach to mitigate the consequences of climate change (vinci et al., 2022). To this end, the european commission’s objective is to reach the european green deal target of at least 25% of the european union’s agricultural land under organic farming by 2030.

AIM: Previous research on the fruity character of red wines highlighted the role of esters [1]. Literature provides evidence that, besides these esters, other compounds that are not necessarily volatiles may have an important impact on the overall fruity aroma of wine, contributing to a masking effect [2][3]. The goal of this work was to assess the olfactory consequences of a mixture between esters and proanthocyanidic tannins, through sensory and physico-chemical approaches.