Volatile organic compounds: a role in elicitor-induced resistance of grapevine against pathogens?

Extreme climatic events, such as prolonged drought followed by intense flooding, increasingly impact viticulture, affecting vine physiology, productivity, and grape composition.

Context and purpose of the study ‐ Recently early defoliation (ED) has been tested in several high‐ yielding grapevine varieties and sites aiming at reducing cluster compactness and hence, regulating yield and susceptibility to botrytis bunch rot infection. The reported results have been generally positive, encouraging growers to use this canopy management technique as an alternative for replacing the conventional time‐consuming cluster thinning and, simultaneously, as a sustainable practice to reduce the use of fungicides. However, ED increases berry sunburn risks and/or can induce carry‐over effects on vigor and node fruitfulness as shown in the two case studies reported in this work.

Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) has long been a ratio to quantify relative plant water status in several crop and woody plants. Given its rather well relationship to either leaf or stem water potential and the feasibility to sample big vineyard areas as well as to collect quite a huge quantity of data with airborne cameras and image processing applications, it is being studied as a tool for irrigation monitoring in commercial vineyards. The objective of this paper was to know if CWSI estimated by measuring leaf temperature with an infrared hand held camera could be used to substitute the measure of stem water potential (SWP) without losing accuracy of plant water status measure.

In Portugal, and particularly in the Demarcated Region of Douro (DDR), wine production has a great tradition, producing the unique and worldwide famous Port wine as well as other remarkably good table wines. In this study the impact of projected climate change to wine production is analysed for the DDR. A statistical grapevine yield model (GYM) is developed using climate parameters as predictors.

Aim: In recent times the export of Beaujolais wines has been jeopardised due to a limit of manganese content (Mn) in wine implemented by China (2 mg/L), related to suspicions of potassium permanganate fraud. Nevertheless, soil Mn content may be high in some soil types in Beaujolais. The aim of this study was to improve knowledge of manganese transfer from soil to vine and wine because data on this subject is scarce.