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Hummingbirds May Help Control Invasive Berry Pests
June 22, 2023 | Cornell CALS
A study by extension and entomology profs at New York State Integrated Pest Management and Cornell AgriTech shows that hummingbirds reduced spotted-wing drosophila fruit infestation levels by up to 64% in field trials. SWD attack berries, including grapes, just as they’re beginning to ripen, and spurs sour rot.
Growers See Labor in, Data out with Tracking Apps
June 22, 2023 | Good Fruit Grower
Grape growers and orchardists commonly have tracking apps for piece-rate workers, and some are using that data to make more informed decisions about their farming costs and, ultimately, farm-gate pricing. From time offline for equipment repairs to overtime and time-intensive manual management practices, “we can look at—here’s what we’ve spent, block by block, in hard farming costs, so we know what we’ve got to sell these grapes for,” says one grower.
Weather Issues in Missouri Could Wipe out Nearly Three-Quarters of Wine Production
June 21, 2023 | Brownfield Ag News
Missouri’s Ag Director says extreme weather—from erratic temps from December through April, culminating in a late freeze at budbreak—has caused a 70% decline in the state’s wine production this year. The current drought, she says, could cause long-lasting damage to the state’s grapevines.
Groundwater Recharge: A Work in Progress
June 21, 2023 | Wine Business Monthly
Fourth-generation wine grape growers Brian and Nick Davis of Davis Vineyards in California’s Central Valley are using their old flood irrigation systems to recharge groundwater, finding it improves yields and soil health. They focus the flooding on the portions of their 1,100 acres of winegrapes where cover crops are in place. There, “we notice we get better percolation when we have cover crops and the soil holds the moisture better as well,” they said.
ASEV-Eastern Section Meets in Austin, Texas
June 21, 2023 | Wine Business Monthly
The American Society for Enology and Viticulture - Eastern Section Conference, held in Austin, TX, earlier this month, offered an industry workshop called, “Droughts to Floods: Growing Grapes in Challenging Environments,” featuring seven scientists from across the country. From vineyard nutrition to newly developed grape varieties, to solutions to enological challenges, the speakers presented unique perspectives on the hurdles of a changing climate on grape-growing and winemaking.
NIST Lays Groundwork for Future Ultra-Precise Timing Links to Geosynchronous Satellites
June 21, 2023 | NIST
Have you ever wondered how satellite signals (increasingly used in agriculture) passing through Earth’s atmosphere and orbit are transmitted accurately, particularly as it relates to something as precise as time? Here, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reports on new research on how we can get highly accurate timing signals to satellites, despite all that turbulence. The solution: NIST’s frequency combs. The novel technique—involving beaming laser frequency comb pulses—could make synchronization of distant clocks 10,000 times more accurate than we can currently achieve.
Could Gene Editing Create More Disease-Resistant Grape Varieties?
June 14, 2023 | SevenFifty Daily
After creating genetic maps for more than 20 Vitis families in the VitisGen2 project, the VitisGen3 team is now exploring the role of specific genes in conferring resistance to powdery mildew and other diseases. They’ll use CRISPR to insert candidate genes into other grapevines, not to make GE plants but to test the response. The goal is to better understand the genes’ functions and isolate traits of interest—and possibly lead to a super-resistant SuperGrape.
Spotted Lanternflies Are Back. You Should Still Kill Them.
June 14, 2023 | The New York Times
The battle continues against the spotted lanternfly, which may be “coming for your wine,” reports The New York Times. Eradication is unlikely, so containment is now the goal of the agriculture community. SLFs proliferate easily, so killing them is the best way to ensure they aren’t unknowingly carried onto cars or even planes. It is “knocking at the doors of vineyards in Long Island and the Finger Lakes region,” says Penn State’s Julie Urban, and have even appeared on cargo flights to California, where an infestation would be economically “devastating.”
As Expected, Wine Grapes Found to Have High Deleterious Genetic Burden
June 8, 2023 | Phys.org
Chinese researchers used machine learning to sequence genetic data from wild and domestic European grapes, finding that, throughout hybridization events and breeding improvements over 3,000 years, genetic fragments or “junk DNA” have been introduced. Although referred to here as “deleterious variants,” this DNA is typically non-coding and can actually serve as a buffer against the truly deleterious effects of random mutations that alter coding genes. The team also looked at table grapes. They found these varieties to have undergone 100 times fewer hybridization events, suggesting that, “while wine grapes have gone through intensive crop improvement, the table grape has been perfect all along.”
WCSETF Annual Smoke Summit
June 7, 2023 | Via Zoom
At the third-annual Smoke Summit, produced by the West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force, scientists shared their research plans and progress to-date. Of note, USDA-ARS National Program Leader Tim Rinehart confirmed that $15M had been committed to smoke-related research so far, and that figure will compound at $5M annually now, with full federal appropriations for this important topic. While half of the appropriation is “passed through” to university scientists, half is used for new smoke research at ARS—a new area of study for the agency—with priorities in risk assessment thresholds and mitigation strategies.
Biochar Enhances Compost Value in the Vineyard
June 6, 2023 | American Vineyard Magazine
A three-year trial by Salinas, CA-based vineyard management company Monterey Pacific showed that biochar—especially used in combination with compost—improved yield, fruit quality, soil respiration, rooting systems and, maybe most importantly, ROI. Even in trial-year 3, when poor fruit-set conditions occurred, the treated vines produced good yields. "This kind of resiliency under adverse conditions really is what growers need," says MPI's Doug Beck.
New Biological Products Prove More Effective, Meet Sustainability Needs
June 4, 2023 | Wine Business Monthly
The use of naturally derived “biologicals” is growing, often outpacing chemical treatments in the vineyard. In this introduction, we learn the basics about the three types of biologicals—biopesticides, biostimulants and bionutrients—including how they work, how they’re regulated and how they can further sustainability goals.
Improved Decision-Making for Grapevine Leafroll and Red Blotch Diseases Using Rapid Identification Tools and a Regional Approach to Monitoring and Management
June 2023 | PD/GWSS Board Newsletter
Successfully managing grapevine leafroll and red blotch diseases means removing diseased vines. But identifying them can be challenging when symptoms are confusing, asynchronous or absent. Napa-based UCCE extension agents Monica Cooper and Jennifer Rohrs are improving the accuracy of visual assessments using AI and an in-house LAMP-GRBV assay. The pilot version of their Virus Vision app is more than 87% accurate in IDing diseased blocks. An updated version of the app, with more photos in its database, will be released and tested in Fall 2023.
Soil Health Assessment Tools & Resources
June 2023 | The Crush, California Association of Winegrape Growers
Soil health is increasingly important to grape growers as part of sustainability plans and climate-smart ag initiatives. But do you know how it is defined? In this comprehensive article, writer Ted Rieger explains that the phrase refers to a range of dynamic biological, chemical and physical soil properties that can be altered through management practices rather than inherent properties like texture, mineral content and composition that remain relatively constant and are not easily changed.
Spring Freeze: Cornell Helps Vintners Recover Growing Season
May 31, 2023 | Cornell Chronicle
Cornell scientists Hans Walter-Peterson and Jason Londo discuss the deep and prolonged freeze in mid-May that caused significant damage to vineyards in New York’s Finger Lakes and Hudson Valley AVAs. Abundant water in swelling buds and shoots turned to ice, causing cell death, Hans explains. Jason notes that frost protection is an active—but challenging—area of research. “There are not a lot of ways to get plants to resist freezing once they have water in those big cells. (Plus), it’s hard to develop mitigation techniques that work for every freeze.”
Multigenic Resistance to Xylella fastidiosa in Wild Grapes and Its Implications within a Changing Climate
May 30, 2023 | Communications Biology
Of all the plants susceptible to Pierce’s disease (grapevines, almonds, citrus, olives, coffee) Vitis arizonica (a wild relative of Vitis vinifera) is the only one known to segregate for resistance. Using this species, this international team implicated several genomic regions for resistance and identified candidate genes to test in breeding trials. They also combined landscape-scale genetic data and climate models to predict how and where the bacterium may spread under climate change conditions. Their results show that roughly a quarter of viticulture will be subjected to additional X. fastidiosa pressure in the future.
Leaf Removal – Why, When, How with Dr. Cain Hickey & Galen Troxell
May 30, 2023 | Vineyard Underground
Grape growers remove leaves from the fruit zone to improve airflow and sun exposure in an effort to reduce disease pressure, and improve spray penetration and fruit quality. But when is the best time to do it? How many leaves should be removed and are there risks involved in pulling too many, too soon? Can leaf pulling be mechanized?
Shifting Microbial Communities Can Enhance Tree Tolerance to Changing Climates
May 25, 2023 | Science
New research into “microbially mediated climate tolerance” shows that tree seedlings inoculated with microbial communities sourced from drier, warmer or colder sites displayed higher survival when faced with drought, heat, or cold stress, respectively. The work suggests that interactions with soil microbial communities may serve as a source of resilience for woody perennials in the face of climate change.
Understanding Gene(s)-to-Trait Relationships and Developing New Marker-free Genome Editing Methodology
May 2022 | Vine to Wine, Oregon Wine Research Institute
Grapevine Red Blotch Virus (GRBV) is an “expert at getting into the grapevine cells,” so why not exploit that ability as a tool for non-transgenic gene editing? Laurent Deluc (Oregon State University) and Roger Thilmony (USDA-ARS) plan to use “a simplified part of the GRBV genome” to “create what we call a ‘viral replicon’” that will carry and insert genetic information to cells in microvines for proof of concept for marker-free genome editing.
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