iWinegrape production is one of the most economically important agrosystems in Europe. Grapevine has a large breadth of genetic diversity at the rootstock, variety, and clone levels. Unfortunately, very little of this diversity is currently utilized and its potential role in abiotic stress response has not been properly quantified. This leaves growers with the open-question of which is the best tool(s) to adapt their vineyards to specific environmental challenges (e.g. heatwaves, drought, waterlogging, etc). With this in mind, project DiverGrape has been designed to quantify the contribution to environmental response of: i) clonal variation within given local varieties, ii) rootstock material for a given variety and iii) the interaction between rootstock and scion. Therefore, the results obtained through project DiverGrape will provide grape growers with the knowledge to optimize the existing grapevine genetic diversity in order to adapt their vineyards to more extreme climate situations.
We plan that 3 Practice Abstracts will be developed including: i) a farmer guide on how to select rootstocks genotypes for adapting the main grapevine cultivars to climate change, ii) the clonal diversity contributions to the scion responses to environmental stress and iii) options to modulate vine adaptation and grape and wine composition depending on the rootstockXscion interactions.
*At the time of the proposal. Please consider this data as an accurate estimate; it may vary during the project’s lifespan.
Total costs include in kind contribution by grant holders and can therefore be higher than the total requested funding.