<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Aims</strong>: The present paper is focused on wild and feral grapevines from the Ega River gallery forest (Alder grove), one of the most important tributaries of the Ebro River. Since this area was preliminary prospected in 1995, it was our intention to assess the evolution of the ecosystem during this time.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Methods and results</strong>: Ampelographic description of wild grapevines shows that all male plants had flowers with fully developed stamens and no gynoecium. No hermaphrodite individuals were detected. No virus infection and symptoms caused by Phylloxera on roots were detected. The Erineum strain of <em>Colomerus vitis</em> constitutes the main phytophagous arthropod. Damages caused by powdery and downy mildew were not lethal for the vines. Around 73% of the wild grapevine individuals found in 1995 had disappeared due to human impacts. The number of rootstocks and producer hybrids (French hybrids) had increased in this period by about 30%. Microvinification of wild berries yielded a wine with very high color intensity and total polyphenol index with a low pH.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Conclusion</strong>: The wild grapevine population described has suffered a dramatic regression in the 20-year period between prospections, together with a significant increase of feral accessions thus endangering the endurance of the ecosystem and remaining wild grapevine.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Significance and impact of the study </strong>: Wild grapevines are a valuable genetic resource for the genetic improvement of cultivated vines. However, our study shows that human impacts and increasing pressure of feral accessions are threatening wild grapevine populations.</p>
Vintage port is a wine produced in very limited amounts in the Portuguese region of the Douro Valley. It ages very slowly in bottles and few analytical data are available. Thus, the composition of 24 wines from the cellars of DOW'S and Graham's,* corresponding to 12 different years between 1963 and 1990, was analysed. Forty-one analytical parameters determined on each sample were used to predict the year using a partial least squares (PLS) regression and to identify the cellar using a soft independent modelling class analogy (SIMCA) model. Both problems fall naturally within the field of food chemometrics and present the statistical difficulty of having fewer objects than variables. It is, therefore, impossible to apply normal multiple regression and discriminant analysis techniques. The PLS model requires two latent variables and explains 97.4% of the variance of the age variable and 90.2% of the cross-validated variance. As for the characterization of both brands, a SIMCA model with two components for each model correctly classified 22 of the 24 samples; it gives a sensitivity of 83.3% and a specificity of 91.7% for DOW'S vintage ports, whereas for Graham's vintage ports the sensitivity and specificity are 91.7 and loo%, respectively.
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