Abstract
Everard Edwards presented a paper entitled “The role of rootstocks in grapevine water use efficiency: impacts on transpiration, stomatal control and yield efficiency” at the 7th International Symposium on Irrigation of Horticultural crops, Geisenheim, Germany.
Attending the symposium provided an excellent opportunity for the author to keep abreast of current developments in irrigation science, make/renew contacts that may facilitate future collaboration and to examine the research occurring at the Geisenheim Research Centre. In addition, the author's presence in Europe was utilised to make additional study visits to potential research collaborators in France and the UK.
Summary
Dr Everard Edwards attended the 7th ISHS International Symposium on the Irrigation of Horticultural Crops in Geisenheim, Germany, presenting a paper entitled “The role of rootstocks in grapevine water use efficiency: impacts on transpiration, stomatal control and yield efficiency”. Attendance at the symposium provided a valuable opportunity to hear about new insights in plant responses to irrigation and to renew and make new contacts that will facilitate potential future collaboration on research relevant to Australian viticulture.
Key results at the symposium included:
The link between nocturnal sapflow and embolism repair, potentially giving a tool to understand some of the differences in drought tolerance between grapevine varieties.
The linking of mechanistic models describing stomatal responses and plant hydraulics, together with their application for understanding limitations in plant water use.
A warning on overconfidence in the use of remote sensing data to predict plant growth or stress, due to the wide variability in calibration data upon which such indices are based.
A discussion on ‘water footprinting’, the upcoming ISO standard for this and potential inclusions and exclusions from that.
The observation that there are inherent differences in the water use efficiency of photosynthesis between some plants and that understanding this may lead to better irrigation strategies or even improved plant breeding.
The travel included a study tour of highly relevant research institutions; the Geisenheim Research Center at which the symposium was held, the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences at Bordeaux, France, and the Lancaster Environment Centre, UK. This provided valuable insights into the current state of play in rootstock physiology research in Europe, via Bordeaux and Lancaster, and into the new grapevine Free Air CO2 Enrichment facility at Geisenheim, which could not have been gained from current publications.