Maintaining the Grape Quality on Organically Grown Vines (Vitis vinifera L.) at Vineyard Condition under Temperate Climate of Konya Province

Organically produced conventional products have gained great attention in accordance with the increasing awareness on healthy foods as well as improvements in living standards. Environment friendly strategies to extend the quality of grapes after commercial maturity provide healthy and profitable sustainability in market chain. In the present study, possibilities to maintain the quality of grape clusters on grapevines without any chemical treatments have been studied under vineyard conditions in temperate climate characteristics of Konya Province in Central Anatolia. Grape clusters of ‘Alphonse Lavallée’ and ‘Narince’, one of the most popular conventional grape cultivar in Turkey, were kept on the vines trained with bilateral cordon system. The vines were drip irrigated during the hot summer and the vine canopy was covered with black nets after veraison to protect from the birds, hail and climatic extremities. After commercial maturity, twelve cluster samples per cultivar were collected with monthly intervals to investigate the changes in quality. Up to the 3rd sampling date (at the end of November 2019), little losses in quality features were determined in both cultivars. At the end of the study, at 4th moth (December), significant decay incidences were observed with similar patterns in cultivars. General findings demonstrated that the grape clusters could be maintained on grapevines under intact condition of the cool autumn season in temperate zone by protecting them from the external damages using convenient protective materials up to three or four months depending on the response of cultivars to environmental variables.