The microbial signature of terroir as a biomarker of vine health and wine quality

The soil- and grape-associated microbiota is determinant for the chemistry and nutritional properties of soils, for health, yield, and quality of the grapevine and, as recently shown, for the sensory properties of wines.

It is necessary to understand the individual and community roles of microorganisms, and the relationships between ‘microbiome-vine health’ and ‘microbiome-wine quality’ and the incidence of human practices on them.

Establishing a European-American collaboration, the authors have developed a dynamic database, based in metagenomics technology, to unravel the microbiology of vineyard diseases, crop yield and fermentation quality. Using cloud-computing, they are exploring the microbiome of thousands samples. With this information, they apply bioinformatics and data mining to establish microbial patterns associated to different wine regions, different agronomical practices and to identify the microbial consortia associated to vine diseases and health.

As a result, they aim to develop an intelligent platform useful for both winegrowers and winemakers to understand the microbiological reasons of their risks and problems, allowing them to better manage their practices at vineyard and cellar;

and for regulatory councils from appellations of origins to establish ‘standard profiles’ for their wines, understanding the microbial and chemical bases of their distinctive terroir.

This reserch was presented at the Premio Internazionale OENOPPIA 2017 . The report reproduced in this video was presented at the 10th edition of Enoforum (Vicenza, 16-18 May 2017)