Continuous grass coverage as a management practice in humid environment vineyards increases compaction and CO₂ emissions but does not modify must quality

Abstract

Few works have been carried out on the coupled impacts of different management practices and tractor traffic on soil properties and degradation in vineyards, grape productivity and must quality. The influence of different tillage practices (conventional tillage—CT; grass coverage in a given year—INV‐GC; tillage in a given year—INV‐T) and continuous grass coverage (CGC) on bulk density (BD), soil water content (SWC), CO2 emissions, grape yield and must quality have been investigated in a vineyard in Zagreb, Croatia. During 2017, soil properties were analysed in the 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm layers after 3, 6 and 11 tractor traffic passes. The results showed that tractor traffic increased the BD in the CGC, INV‐GC and INV‐T treatments. The BD at the 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm depths was significantly higher in CGC than in CT. During the wet year of 2017, CT and INV‐T had significantly higher SWCs than did CGC and INV‐GC. The CO2 emissions under different management practices were INV‐T (120.3 CO2 ha−1 yr−1) > CGC (111.4 CO2 ha−1 yr−1) > INV‐GC (71.7 CO2 ha−1 yr−1) > CT (51.5 kg CO2 ha−1 yr−1). The effects of soil management on must quality and grape composition measurements were also detected. Grape yield was as follows: CT (5.37 kg vine−1) > INV‐GC (4.43 kg vine−1) > CGC (4.06 kg vine−1) > INV‐T (3.87 kg vine−1). Treatments had a significant impact only on pruning weight, pH value and free amino nitrogen (FAN), whereas no significant differences were found in the cluster number per vine, mean cluster weight, sugar content and titratable acids.

Tillage-induced impacts on the soil properties, soil water erosion, and loss of nutrients in the vineyard (Central Croatia)

“…al., 2018). In this study case, lower BD (Figure 2A) in GCV was observed in addition to the TV due to the long period of grass-covering which was found to decrease BD in the cases where this management was longterm (Bogunovic et al, 2019a). Additionally, treatment differences were attributed to the management, since the absence of machinery traffic on the soil did not impact soil compaction (Lipiec et al, 2007;Bogunovic et al, 2019a).…”

“…Generally, a decrease of the bulk density (BD) can be observed following tillage (Bogunovic et al, 2017), but those effects are temporary as the soil consolidates with time (Alletto and Coquet, 2009;Al-Jabri et al, 2016). Additionally, traffic highly increases BD in vineyards (Ferrero et al, 2007;Bogunovic et al, 2019a) and distorts soil structure (de Lima et al, 2017). Tillage and traffic-induced changes in BD and soil structure modifies soil hydraulic properties (Horton et al, 1994;Dec et al, 2008;Strudley et al 2008) and increase overland flow (Bogunovic et al, 2020).…”

“…Previous research revealed that grass-covering increases (Bogunovic et al, 2019a) and decreases BD (Ni and Ng, 2019) of the soil in addition to the tilled, depending on the previous management. The effect is dependent on the length of the period from conversion to grass-covering, as in shorter period soils are usually more compacted in addition to the tilled treatments, while in longer periods soils compaction was found to be lower as the soils were altered by the penetration and decomposition of the roots (Ni and Ng, 2019).…”

Changes in the Soil–Plant–Water System Due to Biochar Amendment

“…The resulting higher soil water content and stronger vegetation with higher root biomass can further modify soil CO 2 emission. The type of vegetation and the cover crop can also significantly impact soil CO 2 emissions [23]. Simultaneously, biochars have high potential to sequester carbon, thus reducing soil CO 2 emission [24,25].…”