Clone performance under different environmental conditions in California

Climate change increasingly leads to altered growing conditions in viticulture, such as heat stress, drought or high infection pressure favoring pathogen infection.

Adapting viticulture to climate change is crucial, as it presents significant challenges for future grape production.

Wine colour is the first quality characteristic to be assessed, especially regarding red wines. Anthocyanins are very well known to be the main responsible compounds for red wine colour. Red cultivars can synthesize and accumulate anthocyanins in berry skin to express their colour. However, anthocyanin accumulation is often influenced by a series of factors, such as genetic regulation, phytohormones, environmental conditions and viticultural management.

Over the last decades, climate change and rising temperatures have impacted the wine industry. Wines from warm regions tend to have a higher pH and lower total acidity.

It was at the end of the second world war that professor Branas laid the foundations of french vine selection. He was also behind the creation of domaine de vassal (1949) and antav (1962), which were to become the bridgeheads of the french strategy for the conservation, selection and multiplication of viticultural diversity. Initially based on visually virus-symptom-free massal selections, with the main aim of providing healthy, clearly-identified plant material, the process evolved as knowledge gained towards clonal selection.