Underlying environmental factors of Berry Shrivel in vineyards

Physiological ripening disorders of grapevine affect yield and berry quality substantially every year. Although physiological ripening disorders are of high economic importance in viticulture, the information are scarce and causes still need to be identified. Therefore, further attention is needed to understand the induction of the ripening disorder berry shrivel including the influence of environmental factors, which has not been studied so far. The project aims to identify potential underlying environmental factors influencing BS abundance in vineyards in order to develop BS risk factors on a local spatial scale with in multi-disciplinary approach. Thereby we follow the hypothesis that a) environmental factors could summarize to a higher probability of BS incidence, b) that we can scale, translate and extrapolate these factors on GIS maps and c) that wine making itself allows a certain percentage of BS grapes included without negative effects on aroma profiles. Our experimental approach can be summarized in three work packages (WPs): 1) Developing a BS monitoring method and bring this information into a BS abundance map linked with spatial (geology, soil and vineyard management) and temporal (microclimate, climate) information. 2) We are going to investigate the consequences of BS on aroma profiles of berries and processed wines in order to provide recommendations for farmers, and targeted metabolites will be determined on a phenological timescale in order to follow BS development. 3) Finally, we aim to extract BS risk factors on a spatial and temporal scale for vineyards of our study region, and additionally process the obtained information to drought risk maps. Methods used will be: GIS mapping, climate models, soil analyses, geological characterization, vine physiology, targeted metabolites and aroma metabolites. Our approach will close a gap of knowledge on the physiological ripening disorder berry shrivel by establishing the frist time a spatial information of BS within a study region involving a set of important influencing factors relevant for grape berry ripening. This multi-disciplinary approach is a novelty to target berry shrivel with the aim to identify inducing factors.