Plant water stress is a key indicator of both the crop yield and fruit composition in agriculture. Water deficits are especially important for viticulture, where moderate water deficits were shown to improve berry and wine composition (Chaves et al., 2010) without adversely affecting yield. Furthermore, the global distribution of viticultural regions trends predominately towards temperate climates, which are at risk of experiencing increased temperatures and episodic drought as the climate warms (Gambetta and Kurtural, 2021; Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018). The percentage of grapevines grown with irrigation is expected to increase, relative to dry farmed vineyards, in response to global warming (Costa et al., 2016; Resco et al., 2016), and advances in irrigation management will be critical to ensuring sustainable production of one of the world’s most economically important fruit crops (Alston and Sambucci, 2019).
Traditionally, grapevine water status has been measured via midday stem water potentials (Ψs). Although Ψs has proven to be a reliable indicator of plant water status (Chone et al., 2001), its scalability in irrigation management is limited by the high number of time-consuming measurements necessary to accurately characterize water status within a commercial vineyard. Additionally, measurements of Ψs are subject to variability in both soil water availability and meteorological conditions on the day of measurement; thereby convoluting temporal comparisons of Ψs (Suter et al., 2019). With the likelihood of increased climate-induced stress on grapevines, the viticultural community is seeking new and more effective ways by which to define and measure plant water stress (Gambetta et al., 2020). Unfortunately, the close coupling of physiological and biochemical responses to water stress (e.g., hydraulic conductivity (K), stomatal conductance (gs), and abscisic acid concentration (ABA)), as well as genetic variability, interferes with the interpretation of plant-based responses to hydric stress.
Our current understanding of plant water relations is grounded within the soil-plant-atmosphere-continuum (SPAC) (Philip, 1966); wherein the cohesion-tension theory dictates that water flows from the soil reservoir through the plant xylem network under a negative pressure (i.e., tension) exerted by the atmosphere on the plant (Tyree, 1997). The physical forces pulling water through the SPAC are described by the process of evapotranspiration (Thornthwaite, 1948). In their seminal works, Penman and Monteith partitioned plant and soil evaporation into components representing energy conservation, mass transfer (Penman, 1948), and electrical resistance (Monteith, 1965); resulting in the widely used Penman-Monteith equation for instantaneous evapotranspiration.
While the Penman-Monteith equation provided a more theoretically sound method for estimating instantaneous evapotranspiration, the methodology to estimate canopy and aerodynamic resistance was not well-known. Attempts were made to use empirical wind functions to estimate the aerodynamic contribution to evapotranspiration (Doorembos et al. 1977; Doorenbos and Pruitt 1977), but it was not until the publication of UN-FAO 56 (Allen et al. 1998) that the Penman-Monteith equation was widely adopted for use in estimating monthly, daily, and hourly reference evapotranspiration (ETo) of a 0.12-m tall grass. Until that time, Monteith discouraged the use of the Penman-Monteith equation for estimating evapotranspiration since it was originally designed to study canopy resistance using inputs of evapotranspiration from a lysimeter. It was proposed that the equation be used to estimate ETo using a fixed estimate of canopy resistance and an inverse function of the wind speed to estimate aerodynamic resistance for a daily or hourly modification of the equation. Recall that the original Penman-Monteith equation give instantaneous evapotranspiration rather than hourly or daily evapotranspiration. The hourly Penman-Monteith equation was later modified by the American Society of Civil Engineers – Environmental Water Resources Institute and renamed to the Standardized Reference Evapotranspiration equation for short canopies (Allen et al. 2005). The final version of the Standardized ETo equation for short canopies (0.12-m) and the ETr equation for tall canopies (0.5-m) was published in Allen et al. (2006).
Priestly and Taylor (1972) modified the equations of Penman-Monteith, simplifying the inputs necessary to calculate evapotranspiration and deriving an equation that represents wet surface evaporation over large areas. The Priestly-Taylor equation permits quantification of advection-aridity when relating potential to actual evapotranspiration (Brutsaert and Stricker, 1979; Granger, 1989; Granger and Gray, 1989; Parlange and Katul, 1992; Venturini et al., 2008). In addition, the Priestly-Taylor equation has been used to couple vegetative and atmospheric controls on evapotranspiration (Jarvis and McNaughton, 1986). Yet, only in the last decade has affordable technology with the theory governing the evapotranspiration of water; thereby, increasing both the ubiquity and accuracy of measurements of the Priestly-Taylor index.
Surface renewal offers an inexpensive and accurate alternative to conventional micrometeorological estimations of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) (Xue et al., 2020). Sensible heat flux, derived from surface renewal calculations can be coupled with estimations of net radiation as well as readily available temperature and windspeed data to calculate a daily equilibrium evapotranspiration (ETeq). Commercially available surface renewal stations (e.g., Tule Technologies) provide accurate estimations of ETa (Fulton et al., 2017; Montazar et al., 2018; Rieger, 2017; Zaccaria et al., 2017), which enable real-time comparisons of ETeq to ETa. Priestly and Taylor (1972) postulated that the β coefficient, which directly compared reference to actual evapotranspiration, may one day serve as an index of land-surface aridity. Nearly fifty-years later, Marino et al. (2021), identified the same β coefficient, as a potential index by which agricultural managers may evaluate physiological stress.
The carbon isotope ratio of must sugars (∂13C) has emerged as reliable tool for the assessment of season-long water deficits in vineyards (Brillante et al., 2018; Chone et al., 2001; Gaudillère et al., 2002; Leeuwen et al., 2010; Yu et al., 2021a). This method takes advantage of 13C discrimination in C3 plants: under water deficits, stomatal closure limits the intake of carbon, causing the heavier 13C to be incorporated into the photosynthetic pathway, thereby increasing the ratio of 13C-12C (Farquhar et al., 1989, 1982). Sucrose from the leaves is then translocated to berries (Dai et al., 2013) and the berry must sugars can be used as a proxy for plant water status and stomatal conductance (Bchir et al., 2016; Farquhar et al., 1989). While ∂13C has proven to be an effective method for the assessment of water deficits between veraison and ripening, it is only applicable post- harvest, leaving a dearth in real-time measurements of vineyard water deficits.
The objective of the work was to determine if β would serve as a real-time indicator of physiological stress derived from seasonal water deficits. As the ratio between ETa and ETeq, β relates the actual amount of water evaporated by soil and transpired by grapevines to a predicted amount of water calculated from daily measurements of the energy available for evapotranspiration. Thus, we evaluated β as a novel index by which to assess water deficits within commercial plantings of wine grape vineyards.