Institut für Rebenzüchtung
Sustainability, production safety and economic efficiency are the key indicators for competitive wine production in Germany and Europe. In addition, the changing climate poses significant challenges to viticulture by rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns amplifying both, biotic and abiotic stresses. Since several years, German viticulture is threatened either by immense infection pressure of downy mildew, powdery mildew or long-lasting heat waves. The drought in the summer of 2023 for instance or the continuous rainfall in 2024, which triggered a spike in downy mildew infections due to prolonged humid and warm periods that favor growth of the pathogen. At the same time, more than 95% of German vineyards are planted with traditional, highly susceptible varieties. Thus, winegrowers, and in particular organically farming winegrowers, faced significant crop losses and increased applications of plant protection agents and fungicides, raising production costs and environmental concerns. Abiotic stress, on the other hand, poses an increasingly significant challenge, as traditional grapevine varieties cultivated in the formerly cool climate viticulture conditions of Germany are not well-adapted to the changing climatic conditions. In consequence, the cultivars may be highly sensitive to grape sunburn, which can cause additional damage to grape berry skins, impairing their yield as well as lowering the quality of wines with altered flavor profiles, affecting both market value and consumer preference. Cultivating fungus-resistant varieties, so called PIWIs, which are additionally resilient to abiotic stresses like grape sunburn is one of the most powerful strategies for viticulture to meet both sustainability and climate-adaption goals. As grapevine breeding takes at least 20 years of evaluation, selection and propagation, marker-assisted selection (MAS) is the most effective tool in order to select seedlings shortly after germination. Molecular markers for quantitative traits like grape sunburn are not available yet and need to be developed. Concurrently, knowledge about resilience to grape sunburn, underlying molecular mechanism and response of grapevine berries to heat stress is limited, while the phenotyping of grape sunburn remains labor-intensive and subjective. CLIMAGRAiPE faces that bottleneck by aiming to develop the base on which climate-resilient varieties can be bred more efficiently, i.e. identifying and integrating traits that confer enhanced tolerance to abiotic stressors like heat and UV. By employing an efficient and holistic approach, integrating high-throughput phenotyping, genomic studies, and cutting-edge tools of artificial intelligence (AI), this project will speed up the investigation of such a complex trait like abiotic stress resilience and the development of molecular markers. Both will be essential to support growers in adapting to these challenges. Collectively, this research network harnesses expertise across disciplines in order to optimize molecular breeding techniques, aiming to mitigate climate impacts and promote sustainable viticulture.
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space
