Soil or geology? And what’s the difference? Some observations from the New World

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 75.866 km2 of the world is dedicated to grape cultivation. About 71.0% of the world’s grape production is destined for winemaking, 27.0% for consumption as fresh fruit and 2.0% as raisin. Grape production is mainly hindered by fungal infections, that can develop both in field and post-harvest.

Climate change is having a significant impact on the wine industry through more regular drought conditions, fires, and heat events, leading to crop loss. Furthermore, these events can reduce overall quality of the fruit, even when crop yields are not impacted. Anthocyanins are considered one of the most important classes of compounds for red wine production and are known to be sensitive to vine water status and heat events.

AIM: The refractive index is a basic optical property of materials and a key tool for the determination of major components in musts, such as sugars

With climate change, the occurrence of wildfires has increased in several viticultural regions of the world. Subsequently, smoke taint has become a major issue, threatening the sustainability of the wine industry.

Extracellular substances (ECS) represent all molecules outside the cytoplasmic membrane, which are not directly anchored to the cell wall of microorganisms living through a planktonic or biofilm phenotype. They are the high-biomolecular-weight secretions from microorganisms (i.e. extracellular polymeric substances – EPS – proteins, polysaccharides, humic acid, nucleic acid), and the products of cellular lysis and hydrolysis of macromolecules. In addition, some high- and low-molecular-weight organic and inorganic matters from environment can also be adsorbed to the EPS. All can be firmly bound to the cell surface, associated with the EPS matrix of biofilm, or released as being freely diffusing throughout the medium.