Category: Environment

This post summarizes a review of the state of the art of different physiologically-based water-saving irrigation strategies and methods used to improve productive water use efficiency and berry and wine quality in vineyards. Authors also show how these irrigation practices, combined with more sustainable soil management and other agroecological practices, can help to mitigate the negative effects of climate change on wine grapes cultivation and make irrigated Mediterranean vineyards more resilient and sustainable. The authors also review optimum vine water status ranges and the thresholds proposed for better deficit irrigation scheduling in vineyards. In addition. They consider sustainable soil management practices – such as cover crops, mulching, composting, reduced tillage, mutualistic plant-microorganisms interactions, and agroforestry . The idea is to design sustainable and climate-change-resilient agricultural systems (e.g. vineyards) in Mediterranean semi-arid areas.

Argentina is the fifth world-wide wine producer, with an area of emerging importance in the Southwest of Buenos Aires Province, where climatic conditions are rather challenging. The authors of this post studied the variations in soil and wine bacterial diversity through three consecutive vintages, and how climatic conditions affected said diversity. During the years of the study there were two harsh climatic events, a prolonged drought that extended over two vegetative periods, and an unseasonable spring frost in 2017. The authors found that the bacterial diversity reacted to these climatic events, given that there was a shift in the taxa exclusive to soil and wine, and shared by both, through time. The results show a core of microorganisms in soil as well as in wine, belonging to different phyla that are conserved across the vintage years. A trend to an enrichment in Actinobacteria was detected in soil samples, whereas a high relative abundance of the Acetobacteraceae family and a scarcity of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) were detected in the wine samples. The results of the study contribute to a better understanding of the impact of climatic conditions on the soil and wine microbiota and can provide vintners with valuable knowledge for improving their wine production.

The question is “what is normal”? Like many meteorologists and climate scientists, I get asked this question all the time. We typically make statements that describe a certain day, or month, or event, as warmer, colder, more extreme, etc. than average or normal. This is because observing and discussing climate is inherently statistical and requires comparison to baseline periods to make sense of how they relate to our lives. By saying goodbye to 2020 – I think we can all agree it’s more aptly good riddance – we are moving from one decade into another and ushering in a new climate baseline period and new statistics to report from. So, with new climate normal period data being released in many countries worldwide, and the USA last month, I thought it would be worth sharing a little about this process and what it means as we start discussing the “new normal”.

Photosynthesis acclimation to high temperature differs among and within species. Grapevine intra-specific variation in photosynthetic acclimation to elevated temperature has been scarcely assessed. A study was carried out to (i) evaluate the mechanisms underlying long-term acclimation of photosynthesis to elevated temperature in grapevine, and (ii) determine whether these responses are similar among two varieties. The study provides evidence that grapevine varieties present different acclimation mechanisms to expected warming.

Sustainable management of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is a European Union objective supported on multifunctional agri-environment measures. The effectiveness of specific practices implemented to reverse declines in farmland biodiversity should be monitored using straightforward methodologies and indicators. This post is about a study which outlined an innovative hybrid framework integrating monitoring, statistics and spatiotemporal modelling procedures to predict the response of biodiversity indicators to farm management options in a viticultural landscape of Portugal, the Demarcated Douro Wine Region.

Southern California has seen a resurgence of winegrowing regions in the past few decades, however the future of winegrape climatic suitability in the area has not been exhaustively explored. This post reports the results of a study that evaluated the future climate suitability for the cultivation of winegrape and potential global warming impacts on southern California’s winegrowing regions through a series of high-resolution surface air temperature and precipitation projections obtained with the WRF-SSIB regional climate model.