Vine’s Response to Water Deficit: Ways to Adapt to Drought by Increasing Water Use Efficiency

Abstract

Climate change represents a serious threat for the future of viticulture. The temperature increase, due to a major atmospheric CO2 concentration, leads to a higher environmental evapotranspiration demand that is a major hydric deficit for plants. All that may be impossible, or at least unprofitable, cultivating grapevine in the Mediterranean area along this century. Therefore, the optimization of water use is necessary in order to avoid, or at least delay, this scenario. On one hand, researchers are constantly looking for technological advances in irrigation management. On the other hand, a deep understanding of vine physiological processes and related molecular pathways is necessary, because they depend both on genotype and on environment that can be estimated by mathematics models. Grapevine shows a huge intraspecific genetic variability, so it is possible to identify genotypes very well adapted to seasonal drought. They have capability to induce favorable response to water stress in order to achieve a better water use efficiency. Therefore such as genotypes represent the genetic basis for breeding programs and could supply knowledge for varietal choice in order to improve vine adaptation to new microclimates due to climate change .