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Abstract
Grapevine yield, vigour, fruit quality and vineyard dynamics were studied in the Estremadura Region of Portugal with a Mediterranean
oceanic bioclimate. A 3-year study was carried out in a 15-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon non-irrigated vineyard. Three treatments were
compared: soil tillage (control), permanent resident vegetation, and permanent sown cover crop. The sward treatments induced changes in the
weed dynamics by increasing annual and perennial grasses and perennial broad-leaved species, while annual broad-leaved species spread and
persisted under a tillage system. Compared to soil tillage, the two sward treatments showed a higher water use, primarily during the spring. In
the third season of the experiment, compared to cultivation treatment the two sward treatments showed a significant, favourable reduction in
vine vegetative growth. The sward treatments did not affect grapevine yield or berry sugar accumulation compared to the control, but reduced
must acidity and increased berry skin total phenols and anthocyanins.
# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Grapevine; Soil tillage; Cover crops; Flora; Growth; Yield; Berry composition
1. Introduction
Vineyard cover cropping is widely used in the worlds
winegrowing regions, mainly in areas with summer rainfall
or with irrigation. Cover crop information abounds and
many functions are well knowne.g. prevention of erosion,
easier mechanisation, ground cover, diminution of ground
pressure and improvement of soil structure (Folorunso et al.,
1992; Geoffrion, 1999, 2000). Nutrient competition, mainly
from grass cover crops (e.g. a reduction in the nitrate in the
soil), can induce a low level of must nitrogen content (Le
Golf-Guillou et al., 2000; Maigre and Aerny, 2001).
Furthermore, especially in the case of permanent covers,
plant species diversity has been found to be higher (Gut
et al., 1997).
In deep soils and high vigour situations living green
ground covers can be an advantage, because the increase in
water consumption can induce a reduction in grapevine
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 213 653 162; fax: +351 213 635 031.
E-mail address: anamonteiro@isa.ult.pt (A. Monteiro).
0167-8809/$ see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.agee.2006.11.016
A. Monteiro, C.M. Lopes / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 336342
The soil was a sandy clay loam with the following average
characteristics: clay 24.3%; silt 20.2%; sand 55.5%; organic
matter 0.7%; pH 8.4. The total soil available water, up to
1.0 m depth, was 182 mm, calculated as the difference
between field capacity and the lower limit of water uptake,
reached on the permanent sown cover crop at the end of the
season of the driest year (2003), before the first rainfall. The
weather data was recorded by an automatic weather station
(Pulsiane, Pulsonic1, Orsay, France) located within the
experimental vineyard.
Data were collected in a commercial 15-year-old
Cabernet Sauvignon (Vitis vinifera L.) vineyard, grafted
on 110 R rootstock. The vineyard had a planting density of
4000 vines per hectare, spaced 1.0 m within and 2.5 m
between east-west oriented rows. Vines were trained on a
vertical shoot positioning with a pair of movable wires, and
spur-pruned on a bilateral Royat Cordon system. Shoots
were trimmed twice, between bloom and veraison, at a
height of about 1.0 m.
The experimental design was a randomized complete
block with three treatments and four replications per
treatment. Each replicate (plot) had four rows with 100
vines each, and all the grapevine measurements were made
in the two central ones. The three treatments were: (1) soil
tillage between rows (ST); (2) permanent resident vegetation
cover between row (RV); (3) permanent sown cover crop
between row (SCC); 50 kg ha1, with a mixture of 60%
grasses (Lolium perenne L. Nui, L. multiflorum Lam.
Bartssimo, Festuca ovina L. Ridu, F. rubra ssp. rubra
Echo) and 40% legumes (Trifolium incarnatum L. Red, T.
repens L. Huie and T. subterraneum L. Claire), sown in
March 2002.
In all the treatments a 0.8 m-wide herbicide strip was
achieved beneath the vines allowing a width of the planter
of about 1.7 m. A single application, just before budbreak,
of the foliage herbicide 1800 g a.i. ha1 glyphosate
(ROUNDUP 3601, Monsanto) was done. The herbicide
was sprayed using a motorized knapsack, with one APG
110 V Albuz1 flat-fan nozzle delivering 500 l ha1 at
200 kPa. With the exception of soil management,
fertilization, vine pest and disease control and other
cultivation practices, including grapevine canopy management were similar in all treatments. For fertilization
39 kg ha1 of N and P and 63 kg ha1 of K were supplied
evenly over the surface of the soil every 2 years, at the
beginning of March.
Conventional soil tillage treatment included vegetation
mowing in the first week of February a common operation
that aims to shred vine prunings and a soil cultivation with
a spading machine in spring (budbreak) and a rotary tiller in
summer (end June) to incorporate the vegetation into the
soil.
In the two cover cropping treatments the vegetation was
mowed by a flail mower twice a year, namely before vine
budbreak (first week of February) and at vine flowering (end
of May or first week of June), to a height of 1015 cm.
337
3. Results
During the experimental period (20022004) the mean
air temperature ranged between 10 8C (the mean minimum
monthly temperature in January 2003) and 23.6 8C (the
mean maximum monthly temperature in August 2003), and
the mean total annual rainfall was 885.3, 941.8 and
564.4 mm, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively.
At the end of April 20022004 the vegetation biomass in
the soil tillage treatment (ST) was 137, 538 and 92 g m2,
respectively. This was similar to the other two treatments.
During the 3-year study, in ST the annual broad-leaved
species comprised the majority of the plant species
surveyed, but some perennial broad-leaved species were
also present. The grasses, annuals and perennials scarcely
grew in ST (Table 1). In April 2002 a total of 29 species were
surveyed in ST, where three families were dominant:
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A. Monteiro, C.M. Lopes / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 336342
Table 1
Effect of soil management strategies on spring (April 2004) plant relative
biomass (%) 3 years after experiment set-up
Plant groups
2.2
87.5
0.0
10.2
0.1
RV
b
a
c
b
a
15.2
49.1
10.2
25.4
0.1
SCC
a
b
b
a
a
16.1
36.3
40.8
6.8
0.0
a
b
a
b
a
ST: soil tillage; RV: resident vegetation; SCC: sown cover crop. In each row
different letter suffixes show statistically significant differences at P < 0.05
by LSD test.
Fig. 1. Effect of soil management strategies on volumetric soil moisture (01.0 m) measured in situ during 2003 (A) and 2004 (B) growing seasons. Each point
represents the mean and standard error of the measurements made on 12 access tubes. Vegetation mowing: first week of February and at the end of May; soil
cultivation: budbreak and at the end of June.
A. Monteiro, C.M. Lopes / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 336342
339
4. Discussion
Results of this 3-year study of soil management systems
indicate that annual broad-leaved species spread and persist
under tillage systems. These results match those of other
studies (Derksen et al., 1993; Ba`rberi and Lo Cascio, 2001;
Felix and Owen, 2004). Most of the annual and perennial
broad-leaved species surveyed in the ST treatment did not
appear in the SCC treatment, which suggests that the sown
species mainly the dominant L. perenne were capable of
competing with any potential weed and were quite adaptable
to the local environmental conditions. The programmed
number and time of the mowing seemed to improve and
enhance cover crop establishment and performance.
Table 2
Effect of soil management strategies on estimated average water usea over the three main grapevine growth periods during 2003 and 2004 seasons
Daily water use (mm day1)
Budbreakbloom
Veraisonharvest
2003
2004
2003
2004
2003
ST
RV
SCC
2.85 b
3.25 a
3.17 a
1.58 b
2.05 a
2.15 a
1.30 a
1.12 a
1.33 a
0.95 a
0.85 a
0.96 a
0.74 a
0.58 a
0.67 a
Rainfall
187.8
33.2
13.4
0.8
11.6
Budbreakharvest
2004
1.18 a
0.83 b
0.87 b
45.6
2003
2004
357.1 a
371.7 a
382.6 a
221.8 a
226.0 a
240.9 a
212.8
79.6
ST: soil tillage; RV: resident vegetation; SCC: sown cover crop. In each column different letter suffixes show statistically significant differences at P < 0.05 by
LSD test.
a
Data obtained from the sum of the rainfall with soil water depletion from 0 to 1.0 m soil depth, assuming the absence of runoff, deep percolation and
capillary rise of groundwater.
340
A. Monteiro, C.M. Lopes / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 336342
A. Monteiro, C.M. Lopes / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 336342
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