Phenological diversity provides opportunities for climate change adaptation in winegrapes

Abstract

Summary 1.Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to agriculture. While growers have always struggled with year-to-year variation in climate -early rains or unusually hot summers -climate change provides a major directional shift in mean climate. 2. Across the globe, growing regions are warming and plants are shifting in both time and space. Current and future shifts pose a major challenge to researchers and growers alike, yet they also highlight a major avenue to adapt crops to climate change -by understanding and exploiting phenological diversity. 3. Using winegrapes (Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera) as a case study, we review the phenological diversity present within one crop and its underlying environmental and genetic drivers. In winegrapes, harvest dates are strongly tied to temperature, but this sensitivity varies greatly, with different cultivars (or 'varieties') of grapes ripening much more or less for the same amount of warming. 4. Synthesis. This phenological diversity provides a mechanism to help growers adapt winegrapes to shifting climates -by planting different varieties that will grow well under current and future climate regimes. More generally, understanding phenological diversity -including its environmental vs. genetic components -offers a major avenue to use ecological knowledge to advance adaptation for winegrapes, and many other crops, to climate change.

Plant ecological solutions to global food security

“…Ecological research has a long history of teasing out the relevance of genetic diversity of natural plant populations (Turesson 1922). On this theme, and using phenology of wine grape cultivars as an example, Wolkovich et al (2017) argue that agricultural research on crops needs to follow ecological research on native plants to document phenological diversity to help anticipate and meet the current climate challenge. As the timing of climatic events changes (i.e.…”

Facing Climate Change: Biotechnology of Iconic Mediterranean Woody Crops

“…Winegrape phenology is also very sensitive to climate change. Indeed, the timing of phenological events has changed between 1 and 2 weeks over the past decades (Wolkovich et al, 2017 and references therein). Regulation of timing of phenological events is a complex trait influenced by climate (determined by a subset of environmental cues), genetics, and a complex interaction of both factors.…”

“…Regulation of timing of phenological events is a complex trait influenced by climate (determined by a subset of environmental cues), genetics, and a complex interaction of both factors. However, climate and more specifically temperature is the dominant factor controlling the pace of phenological events (de Cortázar-Atauri et al, 2009) within each cultivar (Wolkovich et al, 2017). The main phenological events linked to overall production and quality in grapes are (i) budburst, that requires daytime temperatures above 10°C to initiate growth, (ii) flowering that is generally accelerated by high temperatures, (iii) veraison (or color break) followed by (iv) ripening, these two being positively regulated by high temperatures although excessive exposure to high temperatures can be detrimental, and, finally, (v) maturity, that is determined by sugar accumulation, for which temperature is critical setting the optimal harvest date (Figure 1).…”

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“…Plant ecologists should work with agriculturalists to provide the appropriate research background to integrate ecological concepts into sustainable cropping (Weiner 2017). We have focused on grain and oil crops in this review, but the concepts apply to other sustainable cropping systems affected by interspecific competition with weeds including bioenergy crops where the quantities of bio-oils and fibre are important (Larson, Renz & Stoltenberg 2016) and winegrapes where sugar content of the grape affects economic and cultural value (Wolkovich et al 2017).…”