Climate change vs Wine industry in the Emilia-Romagna: Assessment of the climate change, influence on wine industry and mitigation techniques

The first part of the PhD thesis was focused on the assessment of the climate change in the Emilia-Romagna, whereas considered research periods were during the both, past (1961–2015 for the entire Emilia-Romagna; 1953–2013 for the ‘Romagna Sangiovese’ appellation area) and future decades (2018–2027, 2011–2040 and 2071–2100 for the entire Emilia-Romagna). Two types of the spatially interpolated meteorological data for past periods (high resolution and low resolution), spatially interpolated climate data with corrected bias from Regional Climate Models for future periods, diverse statistical methods (Mann-Kendall test, Pettitt test etc.) and appropriate bioclimatic indices developed particularly for the climatic classification of viticulture region were used to identify climatic suitability to cultivate grapes in the Emilia-Romagna. Additionally, a real case study was performed with data from seven Romagna’s wineries in order to identify the potential impact of the climate change on the Sangiovese berry sugar content and grape yield. The second part of the PhD thesis was focused on the development of mitigation techniques that may be used to face the impact of climate change in the future decades. In particular, late winter pruning was applied to cv. Sangiovese grapes aiming to reduce concentration of total soluble solids in berries. Additionally, dealcholization and acidification of Chardonnay wines were achieved by addition of must from unripe Chardonnay grapes and utilization of non-Saccharomyces yeast strains. Obtained results in the present PhD thesis may help viticulturists and winemakers to further develop wine industry by choosing climatologically appropriate grape varieties or researchers to further develop mitigation techniques which will allow sustainable grape production in the Emilia-Romagna. The third part was related to the development of an analytical method to evaluate wine parameters affected by climate change and mitigation strategies, same as to analytical profiling of potential additives to face climate change

Rapid assessment of red wine compositional parameters by means of a new Waveguide Vector Spectrometer

A new method for rapid assessment of selected wine parameters based on a 1.6e2.7 GHz Waveguide Vector Spectrometer (WVS) is proposed for the first time. The Gain and Phase spectra of forty-two samples of Sangiovese red wines were acquired in the best frequency range (1.6e2.1 GHz) and modelled using Partial Least Square (PLS) regression to predict alcohol, dry extract and glycerol contents. The prediction of alcohol content showed test set validation R2 values of 0.961 (RMSE = 0.11 mL/dL) and of 0.955 (RMSE = 0.13 mL/dL) for Gain and Phase spectra, respectively. Glycerol and dry extract were predicted at the best using Gain spectra with R2 values of 0.834 (RMSE = 0.31 g/L) and 0.861 (RMSE = 0.51 g/L), respectively. A test was also conducted to assess the technique ability in the detection of alcohol and glycerol contents by preparing and using samples of model wines with known added content of these substances. R2 values up to 0.992 (RMSE = 0.16 mL/dL) for alcohol and 0.999 (RMSE = 0.04 g/L) for glycerol contents were obtained using Gain spectra. The suggested technique has shown to be promising for the rapid assessment of the control process of these important attributes of wines

Fast Analysis of Total Polyphenol Content and Antioxidant Activity in Wines and Oenological Tannins Using a Flow Injection System with Tandem Diode Array and Electrochemical Detections

An analytical method for simultaneous determination of total polyphenol content (TPC) and antioxidant activity (AA) of wines (white and red wines) and oenological tannins, using a flow injection system with sequential diode array and electrochemical amperometry detectors (DAD-ECD), was proposed. The signal at 280 nm provided aggregate data for TPC. The anodic peak related to wine phenolic oxidation was scanned using pulsed integrated amperometry over the potential of 800 mV vs. Ag/AgCl, to obtain AA. Serial dilutions avoided the poisoning at the glassy carbon (GC) electrode and the linear response obtained with both detectors was compared with spectrophotometric assays commonly used in oenology laboratory. Intraday and interday analytical repetitions showed a good repeatability and reproducibility (relative standard deviation RSD < 6% for both detectors), and the satisfactory relationship between the proposed coupled flow injection/DAD-ECD and the classic UV methods (R2TPC = 0.9967; R2DPPH = 0.9621) confirmed the efficacy of flow injection analysis with a coupled detection system, for the reliable quality control of wine and wine-related products