Ningxia grape and wine students complete practicum at Mountain Grove

Ten students from Ningxia University completed their practicum at the Mountain Grove Campus today. Activities included shoot positioning grapevines in the Genomics vineyard under the direction of Susanne Howard, training young Catawba vines, recording grape phenology, collecting disease and insect samples in the vineyard and looking at the problems under the microscope to verify identification, and measuring grape canopy density using point quadrat analysis.

Susanne Howard discusses the reasons for shoot positioning.

Japanese beetles startled the students when they began working!

Japanese beetles were eating leaves and were difficult to work around.

Grape developmental stages were recorded.

It is important to train young grapes to a straight trunks.

The tubes protect the young vines from herbicide spray.

The tapener tools need some adjustment at time.

The group trained 100 plants in no time!

Students looked at symptoms of phomopsis.

Several grape structures were investigated.

They found black rot symptoms and signs on a berry.

The student measure the grapevine canopies.

Data is taken on the times the rod touches a leaf, cluster or a gap.

The students recorded 50 probes per cultivar.

The dowel is inserted every 6 inches when measuring a canopy.

After the point quadrat data was recorded, we did the calculations to develop a table that compared the grape canopies. The Foundation vineyard where the measurements were taken was planted in 2014.

Results from the canopy measurements taken July 2, 2019 in the Foundation Vineyard

Cultivar	Leaf Layer Number	%Gaps	% internal leaves	% internal cluster
Cayuga White	1.3	8%	13%	0
Chambourcin	1.36	10%	4%	3%
Chardonel	1.32	8%	3%	0
Norton	2.34	8%	29%	0
Traminette	1.94	8%	20.6%	0
Vidal Blanc	1.12	8%	1.8%	4.3%
Vignoles	1.56	16%	17.9%	0
IDEAL CANOPY	1.0 – 1.5 or less	20 – 40%	< 10%	< 40%

Discover more from What's happening in the field?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.