Abstract
Future climatic conditions might have severe effects on grapevine architecture, which will be highly relevant for vineyard management decisions on shoot positioning, pruning or cutting. This study was designed to help gaining insight into how, in particular, increasing temperatures might affect grapevine canopies. We developed a functional-structural model for Riesling, Virtual Riesling, based on digitised data of real plants and a comprehensive state-of-the-art data analysis. The model accounts for the variability in temperature-sensitive morphological processes, such as bud break and appearance rates. Our simulation study using historical weather data revealed significant effects of the thermal time course over the year on bud burst of the cane and on primary shoots. High variabilities in these events affect canopy growth and leaf area distribution. This report shows that Virtual Riesling can be useful in assessing the significance of changing temperatures for grapevine architecture and thereby considering management techniques such as vertical shoot positioning. Further developments of Virtual Riesling might support the knowledge gain for developing necessary adaptations in future vineyard management and, thus, facilitate future work on climate change research using functional-structural model approaches.
Highlights
Climate change will affect traditional forms of viticulture from multiple perspectives.Temperature increases in wine growing regions with a cool to moderate climate have already advanced the onset of ripening by two weeks in the past 20 years and are expected to advance phenological development by another two weeks in the near future [1]
Selection of historical growth seasons was based on the fixed parameters annual mean temperature and bud break date aiming for a diversified architectural development between years
As grapevine growth was modelled in dependence of accumulated thermal time, we first compared the average thermal time course for all simulation years (Figure 11) based on average bud break and simulation end dates of the 2000 simulations per year
Summary
Temperature increases in wine growing regions with a cool to moderate climate have already advanced the onset of ripening by two weeks in the past 20 years and are expected to advance phenological development by another two weeks in the near future [1]. An earlier ripening period will expose ripening grapes to higher temperatures and lead to a higher degree of alcohol, a lower concentration of organic acids and to changes in the aroma composition of wines. This may lead to a loss of typicality of regional wine styles. An earlier bud break will increase the risk of late frost damages in grapevines
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