Sustainablity of vineyards in the Priorat region (NE Spain)

Depuis le début des années 90, les vignerons des Caves Coopératives de l’Appellation “Côtes du Rhône” se sont penchés, au sein des structures de réflexion du Syndicat Général, sur deux axes de réflexion:
– Détermination des critères de sélection et de rémunération différenciée des apports de vendange;
– Organisation des sélections de vendanges sur la base des terroirs afin d’augmenter quantitativement le potentiel de sélection au sein de l’unité de production.

In this video recording of the IVES science meeting 2024, Silvina Dayer (PhD in Agronomy, Les Sanctuaires du Mirazur-Groupe Mauro Colagreco, Menton, France) speaks about grapevine drought response to increase vineyard sustainability. This presentation is based on an original article accessible for free on IVES Technical Reviews.

Smoke impacts on wines are becoming a worldwide problem; the size and severity of wildfires increasing due to influences from changing climates.¹ For over a century, wines have been known to have a unique issue of absorbing chemical compounds derived from wildfire smoke wherein the flavor of the subsequent wine becomes ashy, rubbery, campfire-like, and smoky.² The economic impacts of a smoke-impacted wine can last for years depending on the grape varietal, costing Oregon and Washington states in the United States over a billion dollars from the 2020 wildfires, as an example.³ While years of research have indicated elevated concentrations of smoke-related compounds, such as guaiacol and syringol, in wines after smoke events, unfortunately, replicating the sensory experience using smoke-associated phenols has not had much success.⁴

The parameters that determine the grape quality, and therefore the optimal harvest time, suffer variations during berry ripening, related to climate change, with the widely known problem of the gap between technological and phenolic maturities. However, there are few studies about its incidence on grape nitrogen composition. For this reason, the use of an elicitor, methyl jasmonate (MeJ), alone or with urea, is proposed as a tool to reduce climatic decoupling, allowing to establish the harvest time in order to achieve the optimum grape quality. The aim was to study the effect of MeJ and MeJ+Urea foliar applications on the evolution of Tempranillo amino acids content throughout the grape maturation. Three treatments were foliarly applied, at veraison and 7 days later: control (water), MeJ (10 mM) and MeJ+Urea (10 mM+6 kg N/ha). Grape samples were taken at five stages of maturation: day before the first and second applications, 15 days after the second application (pre-harvest), harvest day, and 15 days after harvest (post-harvest). The amino acids analysis of the samples was carried out by HPLC. Results showed that the evolution of amino acids was similar regardless of the treatment; however, foliar applications influenced the nitrogen compounds content, i.e., there was no qualitative effect but quantitative one. Most of the amino acids reached their maximum concentration in pre-harvest, being higher in grapes from the treatments than in the control. In general, no differences in grape amino acids content were observed between MeJ and MeJ+Urea treatments. Foliar applications with MeJ and MeJ+Urea enhanced the grape amino acids content, without affecting their profile, helping to optimize their quality and allowing to establish a more complete grape ripening standard. Therefore, MeJ and MeJ+Urea foliar applications can be a simple agronomic practice, which has shown promising results in order to enhance the grape quality.

Viticulture is a major contributor to the antagonism of positive reputation and negative environmental impacts of agriculture. Vine contributes to structure landscape in the world, resulting, for example, in the delimitation of protected designations of origin (PDO). PDO vine is currently subject to the double challenge of sustainability and climate change adaptation. As vine is very sensitive to diseases and pests, vine requires a high use of pesticides to achieve its quality and yield goals. This high need for pesticides is the most important negative impact of environmental components.