YIELD AND QUALITY COMPOSITION OF GRAPEVINES UNDER DOUBLE PRUNING AND CONTRASTING SEAZONAL MICROCLIMATE

In the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil) stands out the viticulture as an artisanal agricultural small business. In the regions of greatest clustering of vintners there is a well know rainy time frame that coincides with the period of grape growing and maturation. This contributes to drawbacks in the grape and wine quality in most of the harvestings. Nevertheless, in the same region, the time frame of autumn-winter has more favorable conditions, in this aspect, presenting a proper heat summation for grape growing and a more pronounced rainless time from April to October. An experiment was carried out in the location of Jundiai (SP) in the mid-highlands and hybrids and Vitis vinifera varieties were tested. The aim of the study was analyze the ecophysiological implication of cultivating the grapevines under double pruning through four sequential growing seasons; grape composition and yield were verified alongside with berry wet chemistry in order to check out the must quality in the contrasting time frames, winter and summer harvest. Results showed more favorable conditions for berry phenolic maturation in the autumn-winter due to a better distribution of rain as the berry set and maturation were located in the rainless period. Phenolic pigmentation was higher for the grape harvest in the winter and the plant control of assimilates revealed the double pruning as influential on it. These suggest specific management practices for this kind of grapevine cultivation.