Adoption of New Winegrape Cultivars to Reduce Pesticide Use in Europe

Abstract

Background and goals

Climate change has led to increasingly difficult weather conditions and therefore, new challenges for grapegrowers. In Europe, increasing climatic variability is leading to a variety of problems, causing extremely dry summers in one year and extremely wet conditions accompanied by high pathogen pressure in the next. Especially in very wet years, viticulture requires the extensive use of pesticide products to prevent yield and quality loss. The European Union’s ambitious goal to reduce pesticide usage in agriculture by 50% by 2030 is putting further pressure on grapegrowers. However, after more than one-hundred years of grapevine breeding, there are many disease-resistant cultivars available for today’s grapegrowers.

Methods and key findings

This Insight provides an overview on the development of these new disease-resistant cultivars in Europe, their advantages, and the problems that grapegrowers face when using them to adapt to the conditions affected by climate change. Prejudice and uncertainty about these new cultivars has led to a low adoption rate within the grapegrowing sector. Ongoing research that aims to mitigate these doubts will be presented herein.

Conclusions and significance

Disease-resistant grapevine cultivars allow grapegrowers to reduce fungicide usage by up to 80%, depending on cultivar and environmental conditions. These cultivars are an important part of the effort to reduce pesticide usage in viticulture and therefore, to fulfill the demands for pesticide reduction set by the European Union.