Location: Horticultural Crops Production and Genetic Improvement Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-21000-055-043-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 31, 2025
Objective:
Quantify the impact of different doses of smoke on vine physiology and berry chemistry (dose-response curves) by exposing grapevines to 4 levels of smoke.
Approach:
Construct six-vine sized smoke dosing chambers and associated sensors to accurately deliver different levels of smoke particulates for use at the vineyard.
A new smoke dose response system and field chambers will be developed to deliver a range of smoke concentrations to grapevines to conduct future work to develop relationships between actual smoke particle concentrations, vine physiological responses, and smoke marker compound entry into various vine tissues. Specifically, five large smoking chambers will be constructed using PVC pipe and low VOC, clear plastic to cover six continuous grapevines within the vineyard. Fixed amounts of fuel pellets will be burned and piped into chambers, and high precision particulate sensors will record the levels of smoke particulate concentration over space and time during smoke exposure events. A standard curve will be developed that equates particulate concentrations with fuel mass to scale up and apply different dosages of smoke particulates that equate to real world environmental sensors datasets deployed across the region. Once this is accomplished, different doses of smoke particulates will be applied in replicate chambers (including zero smoke controls) at various phenological stages of the season. At different time periods after smoke exposure, a suite of physiological measures of vine growth and function (including photosynthetic gas exchange and photosystem efficiency, vine water and nutrient status, leaf area, fruit yield and ripening of fruit) will be undertaken to develop thresholds of the actual smoke particulate levels that alter vine physiological properties. In addition, different vine tissues focusing on berries, leaves, and woody tissues will be sampled and stored for future analysis of known smoke marker compounds to develop thresholds of actual smoke particulate levels that equate to specific concentrations in various tissues.
