Effect of pruning levels on Yield, Fruit Maturity and Reserves in Malbec vineyards trellised to single high wire system

AHUMADA, GASTÓN; PIRRONE, MIGUEL; SEGURA DIANA MARÍA; BELMONTE, MARCELO; GIORDANO, CARLA; GONZALEZ, CARINA

Santa Fe

Congreso; RAFV Conference 2021; 2021

RAFV

Effect of pruning levels on Yield, Fruit Maturity and Reserves in Malbec vineyards trellised to single high wire systemIntroduction The main objective of winter pruning of grapevines is to regulate vegetative and reproductive growth. Pruning level (number of buds per meter of productive cordon) affects budbreak, leaf area (LA) development, maturity, yield and reserve levels . In this work, we evaluated for the first time in Argentina, the effect of different pruning levels on leaf area development, yield, grape maturity and reserve levels of Malbec vineyards trellised to a SHW system in Mendoza.Materials and Methods We imposed different winter pruning levels (16, 24, 32 and >32 nodes m-1) during three growing seasons (2017, 2018 and 2019) and measured LA at veraison, yield and fruit composition at harvest, and reserves (starch) in trunk at leaf fall.Results: At similar degree of grape maturity, most of the years, between all the treatment 24 and >32 nodes m-1, in general and depending on the season, presented high yield and high reserve levels , 16 nodes m-1 presented high reserve levels , but lower yields. Meanwhile 32 nodes m-1 presented high yield but lower reserve levels in the third year.Conclusions: In general terms the interannual variation of reserves was inversely correlated with yields interannual variation. According to the evaluated variables 16, 24 and >32 nodes m-1 had good adoption to the pruning treatment, 32 nodes m-1 was the less adopted to the pruning treatment showing less reserve levels and yields to the end of the experiments. > 32 nodes m-1 needed three years in order to get high LA, yields and reserves levels.