About

New approaches are needed to secure food production while creating sustainable agricultural systems requiring as few external inputs as possible. The interaction between biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESS) is to play a key role in this context.

Cultivation of grapevine as a perennial crop has a high potential of providing ESS linked to biodiversity since viticulture does not aim at producing maximum yield but rather high quality products. Additionally, viticulture can provide high levels of biodiversity inside the cropped area, which cannot be found in annual cropping systems. Thus, viticultural systems provide ideal conditions for analysing ESS such as soil fertility and stability, water retention, pest and weed control as well as grape quality in relation to soil biodiversity and functioning.

PromESSinG aims to identify management options for promoting biodiversity linked ESS in order to reduce external inputs in Central European vineyard ecosystems. The project intends to unravel biodiversity driven processes associated with the main ESS in viticultural systems taking different management factors into account. A particular focus will be on soil biodiversity, as interactions between the diverse soil biota as well as chemical and physical properties of the soil environment are fundamental for the provision of soil-based ecosystem services.
 

Results

• Inter-row soil management plays an important role in shaping bacterial, fungal, mesofauna and carabid communities. Soil microbial activity was lower with increasing disturbance, while decomposition of organic material was higher at higher disturbance levels.
• For grape quality, a higher degree of soil disturbance resulted in an increase of available nitrogen and malic acid in grape berries.
• Strong positive effects of landscape heterogeneity around the corresponding vineyards on solitary bees could be determined and on average, 80% more bees were found in organic compared to conventional vineyards.
• Organic management and semi-natural habitat coverage also shaped spider community composition.
• Individual studies also indicated that pesticide application affect soil microbial communities and decreased the activity of soil microorganisms. However, the amount of yeast assimilable nitrogen, an important grape quality parameter, was lower in plots with complete cover highlighting the trade-off between certain management practices promoting microbial communities and grape quality.
• Overall, PromESSinG has provided detailed insights in biodiversity linked ecosystem services (ESS) in Central European viticulture and provides management recommendations for winegrowers and other stakeholders in order to promote biodiversity and ESS.