A general phenological model for characterising grape vine flowering and véraison

The traceability of agricultural products, including grapes, is essential for ensuring food safety, quality control, and supply chain transparency. This paper investigates the implementation of GS1 standards in enhancing the traceability of grapes from grower to consumer.

The advent of precision viticulture (PV) has allowed to address problems related to spatial and temporal variability at the within-field scale. Nowadays, several remote and proximal sensing solutions allow description of the existing variability at different temporal and ground resolution through extremely robust soil, vigor, yield, and grape quality maps. In parallel, numerous studies have described grapevine performances within the homogeneous zones and identified soil as main driver of variability. There is a broad consensus that different vigor zones within the same plot may show differential canopy growth, yield and fruit composition, depicting diverse enological potentials and cultural needs.

The application of remote and proximal sensing in viticulture have been demonstrated as a fast and efficient method to monitor vegetative and physiological parameters of grapevines. The collection of these parameters could be highly valuable to derive information on associated yield and quality traits in the vineyard. However, to leverage the informative potential of the sensing systems, a series of preliminary evaluations should be carried out to standardize working protocols for the specific features of a winegrowing area (e.g., pedoclimate, topography, cultivar, training system). This work aims at evaluating remote and proximal sensing systems for their performance and suitability to provide information on the vegetative, physiological, yield and qualitative aspects of vines and grapes as a function of different training systems in the Valpolicella wine region (Verona, Italy).

For the first time, it was established that the timing of inoculation with LAB could significantly impact the concentration of many secondary metabolites leading to significant aromatic changes. From studied compounds, the most influenced were esters and diacetyl.

The sporadic oxidation of white wines remains an open question, making wine shelf life a subjective debate. Through a multidisciplinary synoptic approach performed as a remarkable case study on aged bottles of white wine, this work unraveled a yet unexplored route for uncontrolled oxidation.