Shield4Grape – Breeding and integrated pest management strategies to reduce reliance on chemical pesticides in grapevine
Climate change and environmental degradation have been seriously challenging Europe and the whole world. The EU’s biodiversity strategy for 2030 is a comprehensive, ambitious and long-term plan to preserve nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems. In this context, grapevine (Vitis spp.) is one of the major fruit crops worldwide, and although the viticulture 
is a leading sector of the EU agro-industrial economy, it is also the cropping system with the highest use of agrochemicals and with a high risk of biodiversity loss. Coordinated by the CNR-IPSP, SHIELD4GRAPE (S4G) will implement sustainable agroecological approaches contributing to the improvement of resilience of the grapevine agri-food system against pest diseases in a context of climate change.
The main objectives of S4G will be: i) to exploit grapevine biodiversity and identify new traits for resilience; ii) to implement breeding activities, including new breeding techniques and mutagenesis, iii) to introduce safer and more sustainable strategies against fungal/oomycete pathogens. Demonstration fields will be set up in all the most important EU biogeographical regions interested in viticulture to improving the efficacy of applied integrated pest management protocols in combination with the new grapevine resilient genotypes. Additionally, S4G aims at supporting farmers and researchers, providing advisory services and actors in value chains by establishing an interrelated community that will support knowledge exchange, sharing of the best practices at different levels and socio-economic resilience.
S4G impacts will add value to the wine heritage of the EU regions by reducing the number of chemical treatments (at least by 50%), using strategies that are less hazardous to the environment and favouring the presence of soil beneficial organisms. S4G will contribute concretely to safeguard the territory (particularly those areas with a high concentration of vineyards), the human health, the farmers, the population living in grape-growing areas and the consumers.
Principal investigator:
Giorgio Gambino
Funding:
European Union – Horizon Europe programme
Start date: 01/02/2024
End date: 31/01/2027
Headquarter: Turin Headquarter
Research activity:
Abiotic and biotic stresses linked to global climate change (CLIMA)
Biodiversity of agro-forestry ecosystems (BIODIV)
Research staff:
Perrone Irene
Pagliarani Chiara
Boccacci Paolo
Moine Amedeo
Stefano Raimondi
Technical support: Luca Bordone
Amministrative support: Concetta Mottura, Josè Saporita, Danila Fiaschi, Daniela Cerro, Davide Turati