New plant phenotyping technologies in a changing climate

Trabajo presentado en el ClimWine (International Symposium on Sustainable grape and wine production in the context of climate change), celebrado en Burdeos del 10 al 13 de abril de 2016.Peer Reviewe

Appraisal of wine color and phenols from a non-invasive grape berry fluorescence method

[Aims] To investigate the relationships between the anthocyanin content of Vitis vinifera L. cvs. Tempranillo and Graciano grapes, determined in the vineyard and in the winery by a non-invasive fluorescence sensor, and the final wine color and phenolic traits.[Methods and results] Grape anthocyanin and phenol measurements were conducted with a hand-held, non-destructive fluorescence-based proximal sensor, in the vineyard (on clusters hanging on the vine) and at the winery (on harvested clusters in boxes) in two seasons. The anthocyanin fluorescence indices, ANTHRG and FERARI, were found to significantly correlate with the wine color density (R2 ranged from 0.51 to 0.82) and total phenol index (R2 ranged from 0.44 to 0.87), regardless that the measurements were made in the vineyard or in the winery. Similarly, the CIELAB parameters defining lightness (L*), hue angle (h*) and coordinate b* (yellow-blue component of the wine tonality) also showed significant relationships (R2 ranged from 0.55 to 0.74) with ANTHRG and FERARI indices in very young wines.[Conclusion] This preliminary study showed that satisfactory estimation of the final wine color and phenolic characteristics can be obtained from fast, non-destructive measurements in grapes, using a fluorescence-based sensor, either in the vineyard or in the winery.[Significance and impact of the study] This is the first work showing the capabilities of the chlorophyll fluorescence of grapes to estimate the final wine color and phenolic traits. This information could help the wine industry make more informed decisions regarding selective harvest and winemaking in a fast and cost-effective way. © Vigne et Vin Publications Internationales (Bordeaux, France).The authors want to thank Force-A and its team for their help and financial support.Peer Reviewe

Soil electrical resistivity, a new and revealing technique for precision viticulture

Trabajo presentado en el 11th International Terroir Congress, celebrado en Willamette Valley, Oregon (Estados Unidos) del 10 al 14 de julio de 2016.Peer Reviewe

Infra-Red thermal image analysis for grapevines

Trabajo presentado en el 18th International Symposium of the Group of International Experts of vitivinicultural Systems for CoOperation (GIESCO 2013), celebrado en Oporto del 7 al 11 de julio de 2013.-- Número fuera de serie.Infrared thermal images (IRTI) have been used for grapevine research since the early 90’s. Even though its promising results in the assessment of canopy stomatal conductance and plant water status, from the beginning and recent research publications, it has not been fully applied on a commercial scale yet. It is believed that the bottleneck for this technology is the lack of reliable automation tools for IRTI analysis. Accurate and reliable automation technique s will allow the use of this technique to assess the spatial variability of physiological processes within the canopy using infrared cameras mounted on moving vehicles, drones, octocopters or robots. Automated analysis systems are requirement of The Vineyard of The Future initiative, which is an international effort to establis h fully monitored vineyards in the most prominent viticultural and winemaking areas in the world. In this work, a semi-automated IRTI analyses performed using a code written in MATLAB® for estimate dry and wet references excluding non-leaf temperatures was compared with evaporimeter (EvapoSensor, Skye Instruments Ltd, Powys, UK) measurements used to provide dry and wet references from IRTIs. Results obtained from this research (grapevines cv. Tempranillo) showed good and statistically significant correlations between temperatur e references obtained from IRTI analysis and measured values. This work constitutes one additional step forward to the implementation of thermal imaging as an automated routine technique for physiological vineyard assess ment from proximal sensing and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) platforms.The research leading to this report was supported by the Spanish project “STRESSIMAGING HPRN-CT-2002-00254” and Chilean projects CONICYT (Nº 79090035) and Programa de Investigación sobre Adaptación de la Agricultura al Cambio Climático - PIEI (Universidad de Talca).Peer Reviewe

Solar ultraviolet radiation is necessary to enhance grapevine fruit ripening transcriptional and phenolic responses

Background: Ultraviolet (UV) radiation modulates secondary metabolism in the skin of Vitis vinifera L. berries, which affects the final composition of both grapes and wines. The expression of several phenylpropanoid biosynthesis-related genes is regulated by UV radiation in grape berries. However, the complete portion of transcriptome and ripening processes influenced by solar UV radiation in grapes remains unknown.Results: Whole genome arrays were used to identify the berry skin transcriptome modulated by the UV radiation received naturally in a mid-altitude Tempranillo vineyard. UV radiation-blocking and transmitting filters were used to generate the experimental conditions. The expression of 121 genes was significantly altered by solar UV radiation. Functional enrichment analysis of altered transcripts mainly pointed out that secondary metabolism-related transcripts were induced by UV radiation including VvFLS1, VvGT5 and VvGT6 flavonol biosynthetic genes and monoterpenoid biosynthetic genes. Berry skin phenolic composition was also analysed to search for correlation with gene expression changes and UV-increased flavonols accumulation was the most evident impact. Among regulatory genes, novel UV radiation-responsive transcription factors including VvMYB24 and three bHLH, together with known grapevine UV-responsive genes such as VvMYBF1, were identified. A transcriptomic meta-analysis revealed that genes up-regulated by UV radiation in the berry skin were also enriched in homologs of Arabidopsis UVR8 UV-B photoreceptor-dependent UV-B -responsive genes. Indeed, a search of the grapevine reference genomic sequence identified UV-B signalling pathway homologs and among them, VvHY5-1, VvHY5-2 and VvRUP were up-regulated by UV radiation in the berry skin.Conclusions: Results suggest that the UV-B radiation-specific signalling pathway is activated in the skin of grapes grown at mid-altitudes. The biosynthesis and accumulation of secondary metabolites, which are appreciated in winemaking and potentially confer cross-tolerance, were almost specifically triggered. This draws attention to viticultural practices that increase solar UV radiation on vineyards as they may improve grape features. © 2014 Carbonell-Bejerano et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.ENO and JMA are grateful to the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) for financial support (Project CGL2011-26937). This study was funded in part by Project BIO2011-026229 from the Spanish MINECO. Microarray hybridizations were carried out at the Genomics Unit of the National Centre for Biotechnology, CNB-CSIC, Madrid, Spain. The present work is integrated in the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action FA0906 of the European Union “UV-B radiation: a specific regulator of plant growth and food quality in a changing climate” as well as COST Action FA1106 “Quality fruit”.Peer Reviewe

Monitoring and mapping soil functionality in degraded areas of organic European vineyards

Póster presentado en el 11th International Terroir Congress, celebrado en Willamette Valley, Oregon (Estados Unidos) del 10 al 14 de julio de 2016.Soil malfunctioning, caused by an improper land preparation before vine plantation and/or management, is a common problem in European vineyards. Soil malfunctioning can include: reduced contribution of the soil fauna, poor organic matter content, imbalance nutritional status, altered pH, water deficiency, soil compaction and/or scarce oxygenation. To address these problems, ReSolVe, a transnational European research project, aimed at testing the effects of selected agronomic strategies for restoring optimal soil functionality in degraded areas within organic vineyard. The project involves 8 research groups in 6 different EU countries (Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Turkey) with experts from several disciplines including soil science, ecology, microbiology, grapevine physiology, viticulture, and biometry. The experimental vineyards are situated in Italy (Chianti hills and Maremma plain, Tuscany), Spain (La Rioja), France (Bordeaux and Languedoc), and Slovenia (Primorska) for winegrapes, and in Turkey (Adana and Mersin) for tablegrapes. Three different restoring strategies have been implemented: (i) compost, (ii) green manure with winter legumes, and (iii) dry mulching with cover crops. These strategies have being tested according to their efficiency to improve i) plant and root growth; and ii) grape yield and quality; optimize iii) the quality of soil ecosystem services; and iv) the terroir effect. The first activity of the project was characterizing and mapping the degraded areas within experimental vineyards. In the work we used non-invasive technologies to characterize soil and plant status. In Spanish and Italian vineyards, the delineation of degraded areas was performed by gamma-ray spectroscopy for topsoil, RGB machine vision for canopy status and thermography for plant water status. Gamma-ray spectroscopy measured continuously the natural gamma-ray emitted from the first 30-40 cm of soil, calculating the contribution of the main radionuclides (40K, 232Th, and 238U). The spectra of gamma-ray were able to provide information about mineralogy, texture, surficial stoniness and carbonates. RGB and thermal cameras were used to assess canopy porosity, leaf area exposure and vine water status of both degraded and non-degraded areas. All soil, canopy and water status parameters were mapped.Peer Reviewe

A new app for smartphones to count the number of flowers per inflorescence under field conditions

Trabajo presentado en el International Cool Climate Wine Symposium (ICCWS), celebrado en Brighton del 26 al 28 de mayo de 2016.KBBE-311775.Peer Reviewe

Quantifying spatio-temporal variation of leaf chlorophyll and nitrogen contents in vineyards

Precision viticulture requires the characterisation of the spatio-temporal variability of the vineyard status to design the appropriate management for each area. The goal of this work was to characterise the spatio-temporal variability of leaf chlorophyll (Chl) and nitrogen (N) content and their relationship with the vegetative growth in a three ha commercial vineyard (Vitis vinifera L.) using a geostatistical approach. Leaf Chl and N contents were assessed by two fluorescence indices provided by a hand-held fluorescence sensor. Fluorescence measurements were taken along five dates, from veraison to harvest, on 72 sampling points delineated on a regular grid across the vineyard. Shoot pruning weight (SPW) was measured for each sampling point as indicator of the grapevine vegetative growth. Geostatistical analysis was applied to model the spatial variability of leaf Chl and N content and SPW. The spread showed an increase of the variability of leaf Chl and N content during the ripening period, reaching maximum values prior to harvest. The variograms illustrated a similarity of the spatial variability structure of leaf Chl at all timings, unlike N which showed changing spatial variability structures along the ripening period. The Kappa index evidenced a slight intra-season stability for both Chl and N and showed that N could not be used alone as an indicator to delineate vigour management areas. The existence of spatio-temporal variability of key vegetative components was proved and its knowledge is crucial to implement precision viticulture approach such as variable rate application of fertilizers or water as needed. (C) 2016 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

MAGIC Upper Limits for two Milagro-detected, Bright Fermi Sources in the Region of SNR G65.1+0.6

We report on the observation of the region around supernova remnant G65.1+0.6 with the stand-alone MAGIC-I telescope. This region hosts the two bright GeV gamma-ray sources 1FGL J1954.3+2836 and 1FGL J1958.6+2845. They are identified as GeV pulsars and both have a possible counterpart detected at about 35 TeV by the Milagro observatory. MAGIC collected 25.5 hours of good quality data, and found no significant emission in the range around 1 TeV. We therefore report differential flux upper limits, assuming the emission to be point-like (<0.1 deg) or within a radius of 0.3 deg. In the point-like scenario, the flux limits around 1 TeV are at the level of 3 % and 2 % of the Crab Nebula flux, for the two sources respectively. This implies that the Milagro emission is either extended over a much larger area than our point spread function, or it must be peaked at energies beyond 1 TeV, resulting in a photon index harder than 2.2 in the TeV band.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl