Thermal history parameters drive changes in physiology and cold hardiness of young grapevine plants during winter

GONZÁLEZ ANTIVILO, FRANCISCO ALBERTO; PAZ ROSALIA CRISTINA; ECHEVERRIA MARIELA; MARKUS KELLER; JORGE TOGNETTI; FIDEL ROIG JUÑENT

AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2018

0168-1923

Vitis vinifera is mainly cultivated in temperateareas, where seasonsare well defined and winter conditions might be severe. To survive under theseconditions during the dormant season, grapevines sense environmental parametersto trigger different protective mechanisms that leads to cold hardiness (CH). Cropyield and sustainability will be determined according to the level of CHreached in each organ. Moreover, differentcultivars of V. vinifera exhibit differentbehavior throughout the dormant season, attaining different status of CH. However, there is scarce information concerning how the samecultivar behaves under contrasting thermal environments. The aim of ourresearch was to unveil how CH varies in trunksof the same cultivar under two contrasting environments and define which are themain thermal and biochemical parameters involved in this process. We submitted 2-year old plants of the same cloneof cv. Malbec to two different thermalconditions: natural winter (control) and artificially warm winter (treatment).CH status, thermal and biochemical parameters in trunks where measuredperiodically over the dormant season, and thisexperiment was repeated for three years. Ourresults suggest that grapevine trunks subjected to a different environment reach dissimilar CH status, except at the end ofwinter. In addition, we determined that dailyminimum temperature is the main thermal parameter that driveschanges in CH. Also, we found that the total soluble sugars have thegreatest relative weight in determining the CHcompared with the other compounds evaluated.These results have practical implications in the establishment of vineyards for new growing regions. Moreover, with rising minimum temperature predicted by climate change scenarios, grapevines may bemore vulnerable to cold events during thedormant season.