Cold Climate Winegrape Cultivar Sensitivity to Sulfur in the Northern Great Plains Region of the United States

Abstract

<jats:p>Elemental sulfur is commonly applied for powdery mildew (<jats:italic>Erysiphe necator</jats:italic>) protection on winegrape (<jats:italic>Vitis</jats:italic> sp.). The product may be used in a diversified, integrated disease management system to help prevent fungicide resistance to products with other modes of action. Additionally, sulfur may be used as a control option in organic systems. Applications of sulfur have been known to cause phytotoxic injury to susceptible winegrape cultivars, particularly those stemming from fox grape (<jats:italic>Vitis labrusca</jats:italic>) parentage. To improve recommendations to producers in the northern Great Plains region of the United States, a comparison of injury incidence and severity, as well as effects on yield characteristics was undertaken for 13 regional cultivars exposed to three sulfur rates (0, 2.4, and 4.8 lb/acre a.i.) at a North Dakota State University Research Station near Absaraka, ND. Overall, four cultivars (Bluebell, Baltica, Sabrevois, and King of the North) of the 13 cultivars tested showed phytotoxic symptoms. Injury severity and incidence of these cultivars differed between years and across rates. ‘Bluebell’ showed consistent and severe sulfur injury symptoms. Injury to the other three susceptible cultivars tended to vary by the given environment, with King of the North generally showing the lowest injury response. Injury symptoms were not found to be associated with the overall yield or cluster weight. Results suggest that alternative spray programs that exclude sulfur-based fungicides should be recommended for ‘Bluebell’, ‘Baltica’, ‘Sabrevois’, and ‘King of the North’, whereas sulfur-based fungicides may be applied to ‘Alpenglow’, ‘ES 12-6-18’, ‘Frontenac’, ‘Frontenac Gris’, ‘La Crescent’, ‘Marquette’, ‘Somerset Seedless’, ‘St. Croix’, and ‘Valiant’. Observations on fruit ripening in 2014 suggest that future research is needed to determine if a reduction of fruit quality may occur in some seasons with repeated sulfur applications or with successive annual sulfur applications for susceptible cultivars if used in an organic production system.</jats:p>

Identification and Regionalization of Cold Resistance of Wine Grape Germplasms (V. vinifera)

“…Conventional cold-resistant breeding of grapevines is mainly done by the crossbreeding of wild species or V. labrusca with V. vinifera, so that new varieties obtain major cold-resistance genes from wild species or V. labrusca but maintain the high-quality genes of V. vinifera [17,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. However, we still lack cultivars with high quality and high cold resistance, many interspecific hybrids have been found to have poor fruit and wine quality [5,7,17,24,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

Assessing the influence of autumnal temperature fluctuations on cold hardiness in different grapevine cultivars: variations across vine age and bud positions

“…In particular, the decrease in day lengths and temperatures serve as signaling mechanisms that initiate these changes and therefore activate histological, biochemical and gene expression mechanisms in these vines, causing an increase in hardiness to low temperatures (Jones, 2005;Jun et al, 2021). These adaptations are directly linked to the vine's cycle of acclimation, hardening, and de-acclimation stages (Köycü et al, 2017;Keller, 2020). Cold hardiness in grapevines is considered as an integrated process, with these periods overlapping and succeeding each other, making it challenging to define and distinguish their boundaries (Kaya and Kose, 2020).…”

An Exploratory Analysis of Yield, Fruit Composition, and Single Vine Wines of Interspecific Cold-hardy White Grapevine Breeding Lines

“…The goal of the NDSU GGEP is to assess available wine grape cultivars and generate new breeding lines with regional adaptation for North Dakota. The project has evaluated varieties and seedlings in the field and within growth chamber conditions to improve selection of parents [12][13][14][15][16]. As part of these efforts, seedlings from directed crosses are ultimately evaluated for their capacity to produce a crop with early fruit ripening parameters for North Dakota's short growing season [3].…”