The wine microbial consortium: a real terroir characteristic

The study was carried out in 2006 with Merlot grapes from vines grown using the trellis system, where four treatments were compared with different levels of water stress.

The ongoing climate change results in increasing mean air temperature, which is manifested by weather extremes or sudden changes between drought and local heavy rainfalls. These changing conditions are especially challenging for the established grapevine varieties growing under cool climate conditions due to an increased biotic infection pressure. Thus, the scope of most grapevine breeding programs is the selection of mildew fungus-resistant and climatic adapted grapevines with balanced, healthy yield and outstanding wine quality. Since no resistances or candidate genes have yet been described for Botrytis bunch rot (BBR), physical-mechanical traits like berry size and thick, impermeable berry cuticles phenotyped with high-throughput sensors represent novel effective parameters to predict BBR.

In this work we present a joint model of calculation the budbreak and full bloom starting dates which considers the heat sums and allows reliable estimations for five white wine grape varieties

Genetic diversity within grapevine cultivars is a fundamental resource for varietal improvement and adaptation to cultivation requirements.

The quality of grapevines measured by yield and must density in the northern part of Europe conditons can be characterized as a type of “cool climate” – vary strongly from year to year and from one production site to another. One hundred year observations in Johannisberg from 1890 to 1991 demonstrate for the yield formation a clear dependancy from the year combined with a steady increase in productivity; latter a proof of positive clonal selection efforts.