Sixteen centers will investigate to minimize climate change in wine

Sixteen Spanish research centers will develop the MINORVIN project, to value the biodiversity of minority varieties of vineyards and evaluate their potential to face the effects of climate change.

Climate change causes an increase in temperatures and a reduction in rainfall, which can lead to wines of higher alcohol content and less acidity and, in addition, there are fewer and fewer varieties of cultivated vineyards and, therefore, a genetic erosion of the crop.

For these reasons, sixteen research centers in Spain have joined forces to develop MINORVIN, a project that aims to value the existing biodiversity in minority varieties of vineyards recovered in Spain by evaluating their potential for mitigating the effects of climate change on viticulture.

To achieve this objective, 51 minority varieties from all over Spain, currently undervalued, will be evaluated and, specifically, their resistance to drought, their tolerance to fungal diseases -very dependent on climatology- and their oenological potential to diversify wine production will be studied.

In Catalonia, INCAVI and IRTA lead one of the three subprojects of the work, and study the viticultural and oenological potential of 8 minority varieties of Catalonia.

Source: The Vanguard