Institut für Rebenzüchtung
The ongoing climate change represents one of the major challenges for (near) future viticulture in the whole Upper Rhine region because of an increasing mean temperature, the risk for extreme weather events like increased UV-radiation, drought stress and high rainfalls. In addition to direct damages on grapes, an increasing infection pressure by fungal diseases of grapevines, especially downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola) and Botrytis bunch rot (Botrytis cinerea) can be expected. In order to face this challenge in an environmental friendly way and in order to increase the acreage of organic viticulture, the growing of resistant, climate adapted grapevine varieties (PIWI varieties) have to be extended. Unfortunately, no temporal and spatial high-resolution phenotypic data regarding berry skin resilience (physical-mechanical basis for an persistent resilience) collected from different fields and environments are available, yet. The project WiVitis will strengthening the close collaboration of breeding, research and viticulture across the borders in order to improve the sustainability of viticulture in the Upper Rhine region as well as to face the challenges of the changing climate and corresponding risk for extreme weather events. For this purpose, multi-year and combined evaluation of PIWIs and breeding material regarding different grape and berry traits will be conducted enabling for instance the extension and improvement of reliable prediction models (e.g. VitiMeteo) for grape health. An induced enhancement of the air temperature of potted vines will be exemplary used in order to investigate the effect of increasing temperatures due to climate change on the susceptibility of resilient grapevines towards downy mildew and Botrytis bunch rot. The development of molecular markers for an early selection of breeding material with high resilience to Botrytis bunch rot as important element for grapevine breeding.
Europäische Union
