Global warming and wine quality: Are we close to the tipping point?

Wine grapes are one of the most lucrative crops in the world and this value is founded heavily on traditional winegrowing regions established over hundreds of years. These regions are now experiencing marked changes in climate. People speculate that global warming could reshape the distribution of premium wine-growing regions, pushing regions to higher latitudes and elevations with cooler temperatures. A major redistribution of this kind would be catastrophic for numerous regional economies. Here we examine relationships between warming, fruit ripening, and wine quality in two renowned red wine regions; Napa Valley, California, USA, and Bordeaux, France. We show that both regions have warmed substantially over the past 60+ years and that until now this warming has contributed to increases in the average wine quality. However, ripening relationships revealed that we are reaching a plateau and raise concerns that we may be approaching a tipping point in traditional wine-growing regions

Trunk girdling increased stomatal conductance in Cabernet Sauvignon Grapevines, reduced glutamine, and increased malvidin-3-glucoside and quercetin-3-glucoside concentrations in skins and pulp at harvest.

Girdling is a traditional horticultural practice applied at fruit set or other phenological stages, and is used mostly as a vine management. In grapevines, it is used primarily for table grapes to improve berry weight, sugar content, color, and to promote early harvest. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of trunk girdling applied at veraison, in ?Cabernet Sauvignon? wine grapes (Vitis vinifera L.), on agronomical and physiological parameters during vine development from the onset of ripening (veraison) to harvest, and additionally to quantify the effect of girdling on primary and secondary metabolism. Girdling was applied 146 days after pruning (dap) at veraison, when berry sampling for metabolomics and agronomical evaluations commenced, with a further three sampling dates until harvest, at 156 dap (30% maturation, 10 days after girdling-dag), 181 dap (70% maturation, 35 dag), and 223 dap (commercial harvest, 77 dag). Skin/pulp and seed tissues were extracted separately and metabolomics was performed using one-dimensional proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1D 1H NMR) spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC-DAD). At harvest, girdling significantly increased stomatal conductance (gs) in vines, decreased glutamine concentrations, and increased anthocyanin and flavonol concentrations in the skin/pulp tissues of grape berries. Berry weight was reduced by 27% from 181 dap to harvest, and was significantly higher in grapes from girdled vines at 181 dap. Sugars, organic acids, and other amino acids in skin/pulp or seeds were not significantly different, possibly due to extra-fascicular phloem vessels transporting metabolites from leaves to the roots. Using a metabolomics approach, differences between skin/pulp and seeds tissues were meaningful, and a greater number of secondary metabolites in skin/pulp was affected by girdling than in seeds. Girdling is a simple technique that could easily be applied commercially on vine management to improve berry color and other phenolics in ?Cabernet Sauvignon? grapes. Keywords: amino acids, biosynthesis, grape and wine, 1H NMR spectroscopy, metabolome, organic acids, phenolic compounds and sugars, Vitis vinifera L

Anthocyanin Composition of Merlot is Ameliorated by Light Microclimate and Irrigation in Central California

An experiment was conducted in central California on Merlot to determine the interaction of mechanical leaf removal (control, pre-bloom, post-fruit set) and applied water amounts [sustained deficit irrigation (SDI) at (0.8) and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) at 0.8 (bud break-fruit set) – 0.5 (fruit set-veraison) – 0.8 (veraison-leaf fall) of estimated vineyard evapotranspiration (ETc) on productivity and berry skin anthocyanin content, composition and its unit cost per hectare. The pre-bloom leaf removal (applied ~100 GDD prior to bloom) treatment consistently maintained at least 20% of photosynthetically active radiation in the fruit zone in both years of the study, while post-fruit set leaf removal was inconsistent across years. The RDI treatments reduced berry mass, while the post-fruit set leaf removal treatment reduced berry skin mass. The pre-bloom treatment did not affect yield in either year. Exposed leaf area and leaf area to fruit ratio (m2/kg) were reduced with leaf removal treatments. The RDI treatment consistently advanced Brix in juice. Anthocyanin concentration was improved with pre-bloom leaf removal in both years while irrigation treatments had no effect. Proportion of acylated and hydroxylated anthocyanins were not affected by leaf removal treatments. In both years SDI increased di-hydroxylated anthocyanins while RDI increased tri-hydroxylated anthocyanins. Pre-bloom leaf removal when combined with RDI optimized total skin anthocyanins (TSA) per hectare while no leaf removal and SDI produced the least. The cost to produce one unit of TSA was reduced 35% with the combination of pre-bloom leaf removal and RDI treatments when compared to no leaf removal and SDI. This study provides information to red wine grape growers in warm regions on how to manage fruit to enhance anthocyanin concentration and the proportion of hydroxylation while reducing input costs through mechanization and reduced irrigation

Invasive Japanese beetles facilitate aggregation and injury by a native scarab pest of ripening fruits

Invasive species' facilitation, or benefiting, of native species is rarely considered in biological invasion literature but could have serious economic consequences should a non-native herbivore facilitate injury by a native pest of high-value crops. Japanese beetle (JB), Popillia japonica, a polyphagous scarab, facilitates feeding by the obligate fruit-feeding native green June beetle (GJB), Cotinis nitida, by biting into intact grape berries that GJB, which has blunt spatulate mandibles, is otherwise unable to exploit. Here, we show JB further facilitates GJB by contaminating fruits with yeasts, and by creating infection courts for yeasts associated with GJB, that elicit volatiles exploited as aggregation kairomones by GJB. Traps baited with combinations of grapes and beetles were used to show that fruits injured by JB alone, or in combination with GJB, become highly attractive to both sexes of GJB. Such grapes emit high amounts of fermentation compounds compared with intact grapes. Beetle feeding on grape mash induced the same volatiles as addition of winemaker's yeast, and similar attraction of GJB in the field. Eight yeast species were isolated and identified from JB collected from grapevine foliage. Establishment and spread of JB throughout fruit-growing regions of the United States is likely to elevate the pest status of GJB and other pests of ripening fruits in vineyards and orchards