Centre Projects
Influence of degree and timing of waters stress on grape berry development and flavour and aroma accumulation
Brief:With too many outside influences on vines in the field it is very difficult to run detailed irrigation trials. To overcome this problem a container trial was set up in the NMIT vineyard. 72 Sauvignon Blanc vines were planted individually in 70 L containers that were filled with potting mix. Six drought treatments were applied on randomly chosen vines (only base irrigation) while all other vines were irrigated according to needs. The drought periods were three weeks over flowering (Irr-1), four weeks post flowering (Irr-2), four weeks over veraison (Irr-3) and six weeks until harvest (Irr-4) and were compared with the fully irrigated control (Irr-5 and Irr-6). Irr-2 and Irr-3 had the biggest impact by reducing yield to only 60% of the other treatments. This reduction was all due to a reduction in bunch size and to a lesser extent to berry size (Irr-2). No differences were found in °Brix, TA or pH at harvest nor in pruning weights when pruned in August.
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