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

FRANCISCO GONZALEZ ANTIVILO; ROSALIA CRISTINA PAZ; ECHEVERRIA MARIELA; KELLER MARKUS; JORGE TOGNETTI; ROBERTO BORGO; FIDEL ALEJANDRO ROIG

AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2018

0168-1923

Vitis vinifera is mainlycultivated in temperate areas, where seasons are well defined and winterconditions might be severe. To survive under these conditions during thedormant season, grapevines sense environmental parameters to trigger different protectivemechanisms that leads to cold hardiness (CH). Crop yield and sustainabilitywill be determined according to the level of CH reached in each organ.Moreover, different cultivars of V.vinifera exhibit different behavior throughout the dormant season, attainingdifferent status of CH. However, there is scarce information concerning how thesame cultivar behaves under contrasting thermal environments. The aim of ourresearch was to unveil how CH varies in trunks of the same cultivar under two contrastingenvironments and define which are the main thermal and biochemical parametersinvolved in this process. We submitted 2-year old plants of the same clone ofcv. Malbec to two different thermal conditions: natural winter (control) andartificially warm winter (treatment). CH status, thermal and biochemicalparameters in trunks where measured periodically over the dormant season, and thisexperiment was repeated for three years. Our results suggest that grapevine trunkssubjected to a different environment reach dissimilar CH status, except at theend of winter. In addition, we determined that daily minimum temperature is themain thermal parameter that drives changes in CH. Also, we found that the totalsoluble sugars have the greatest relative weight in determining the CH comparedwith the other compounds evaluated. These results have practical implicationsin the establishment of vineyards for new growing regions. Moreover, withrising minimum temperature predicted by climate change scenarios, grapevines maybe more vulnerable to cold events during the dormant season.