The Soil Component of Terroir

Botrytis bunch rot occurrence is the most important limitation for the wine industry in humid environments. The effect of grapevine vegetative growth on bunch rot expression results from direct effects (cluster architecture, nitrogen status among others) and indirect ones (via microclimate). Previous studies of our group showed strong differences in bunch rot incidence between floor management treatments: cover crop (CC) vs weed-free strips under the trellis with herbicide (H). We observed that in some circumstances this reduction in bunch rot incidence occurred without major vine growth differences among treatments. The aim of the present study was to test the general hypothesis that other factors unrelated to grapevine vegetative expression could be more relevant to grapevine susceptibility to bunch rot.

Climate change is having an ever-increasing impact on the physico-chemical composition of grapes, with ever-lower acidity and higher sugar levels.

Grape cane is a viticultural by-product that is currently underused or not used at all. Therefore, it bears a high potential for valorization due to the presence of anti-microbially active stilbenoids, being biologically relevant for plant defense. These compounds are highly interesting for applications in the agricultural sector as well as for the food and feed industry.

Grapevine yield and fruit quality are two major drivers of input allocation and, ultimately, revenue for grape producers. Because yield and fruit quality vary substantially from year-to-year and within a single block, opportunities exist for optimization via precision management activities that could lead to more profitable and sustainable grape production. Here, we review recent advances in the techniques and technology used to measure, estimate, and forecast grapevine yield and fruit quality. First, we discuss direct “measurement” of yield and quality (i.e. ground-truth data generation), with an emphasis on potential for scalability and automation. Second, we discuss technology and techniques that do not directly measure yield and quality, but use correlated measurements for their estimation.

Global warning increases evaporative demand and accelerates grapevine phenology. As a consequence, the ripening phase shifts to warmer and drier periods. This results in lower acidity and higher sugar levels in berries, yielding too alcoholic wines with altered organoleptic properties. Agrivoltaics, which combines crop and renewable energy production on the same land using photovoltaic panels, emerged as a promising innovation to counteract these impacts by partially shading the plants.