Wine Grape Cultivars Adaptation and Selection for Tropical Regions]

Wine production is a recent economical activity on tropical regions. In Brazil, tropical wines production started on Sub-Middle Sao Francisco River Valley Region in the early 1980 years. In the following years, other tropical countries such as Venezuela, Thailand and India have invested in the wine industry. All wine grape cultivars used in the tropical zones are introduced from the traditional temperate winegrowing regions. There are a small number of wine grape cultivars whose cultivation is consolidated in tropical environments, such as 'Syrah' and 'Chenin Blanc', which possess good adaptation and present a great potential of wine quality. Wine grape cultivars evaluation and selection is one of the important priorities in order to diversify the quality wine production in the tropics. The environmental diversity of tropical zones in comparison with the original regions of wine grape cultivars, all of them from temperate climates, requires detailed evaluation and specific cultural practice adjustments to obtain convenient production from each cultivar and for each tropical environment. Climatic factors as winter absence, temperature changes and rain variations throughout the year change the physiological behavior of vines, offering different grapes and wine qualities at different seasons. In this paper are discussed questions inherent to the screening criteria and evaluation methodology to select wine grape cultivars to produce quality wines in tropical regions. Results obtained at the Sub-Middle Sao Francisco River Valley are presented.