A Viticultural Terroir in Brazil: Change and continuity

Grapevine is a crop of great economic importance for several countries. The intensification of grapevine production has mostly been sustained by the increasing use of water resources at the expense of the environmental water balance. Moreover, in the last decades, climate change and the consequent expansion of drought have further compromised water availability, making current agricultural systems even more fragile both ecologically and economically. Recently, many research groups have highlighted the important role of endophytes in facilitating plant growth under optimal or stressful conditions. Within the framework of the PRIMA project, we aim to investigate the possible exploitation of the natural endophyte biodiversity as a sustainable tool to make grapevine plants more resilient to water deficit environmental conditions.

Mild to moderate and timely water deficit is desirable in grape production to optimize fruit quality for winemaking. It is crucial to develop robust and rapid approaches to assess grapevine water stress for scheduling deficit irrigation. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has the potential to detect changes in leaf water status, but the robustness and accuracy are restricted in field applications.

The mechanization of pruning and harvesting in vineyards has increased the risk of soil compaction. To reclaim soil properties or avoid this degradation process, it is crucial to properly manage the soil organic matter, and the application of compost derived from the vines themselves is a strategy to achieve this. The objective of this study was to evaluate the properties of soil treated with different doses of compost applied both on the vine row and the inter rows of a Vitis vinifera crop.

Wine aroma is influenced by several viticultural and oenological factors. In this study we used experimental wine making in a full factorial design to determine the impact of grapevine age, must turbidity, and yeast strain on the aroma of Vitis vinifera L. cv. Riesling wines. A recently developed, non-targeted SPME-GC-MS fingerprinting approach for wine volatiles was used. This approach includes the segmentation and mathematical transformation of chromatograms in combination with Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) and subsequent deconvolution of important chromatogram segments.

Context and Purpose. Management of plant-parasitic nematodes in perennial cropping systems such as wines grapes is challenging.