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Publication
Deficit irrigation in grapevine improves water-use efficiency while controlling vigour and production quality
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Grapevine irrigation is becoming an important practice to guarantee wine quality
or even plant survival in regions affected by seasonal drought. Nevertheless, irrigation
has to be controlled to optimise source to sink balance and avoid excessive
vigour. The results we present here in two grapevine varieties (Moscatel and Castela
˜o) during 3 years, indicate thatwe can decrease the amount ofwater applied by
50%(as in deficit irrigation, DI, and in partial root drying, PRD) in relation to full
crop’s evapotranspiration (ETc) [full irrigated (FI) vines] with no negative effects
on production and even get some gains of quality (in the case of PRD).We report
that in non-irrigated and in several cases in PRD vines exhibit higher concentrations
of berry skin anthocyanins and total phenols than those presented by DI and
FI vines.We showed that these effects on quality weremediated by a reduction in
vigour, leading to an increase on light interception in the cluster zone. Because
plant water status during most of the dates along the season was not significantly
different between PRD and DI, and when different, PRD even exhibited a higher
leaf water potential than DI vines, we conclude that growth inhibition in PRD was
not a result of a hydraulic control. The gain in crop water use in DI and PRD was
accompanied by an increase of the δ13 C values in the berries in DI and PRD as
compared to FI, suggesting that we can use this methodology to assess the integrated
water-use efficiency over the growing season.
Description
Keywords
Deficit irrigation Grapevines Production Vigour Water-use efficiency
Citation
Annals of Applied Biology, 150, 237-252