Wine and Soft Fruits

Objectives

Fruit production, for direct consumption or processing, is of high importance worldwide contributing to significant agronomic value chains and the human diet. The ELLS subject area “Wine & Soft Fruits” aims to focus on berries in its diversity and multitude of production systems. Research in grape and other fleshy fruits production needs progress to meet the imposed challenges by climate change, sustainability, consumer demands or market rules. Vineyards and orchards are not just managed agro-ecosystems, they also provide additional ecosystem services and social inputs by shaping landscapes providing aesthetic quality and recreational values for inhabitants and tourist. In perennial species, the adaptation capacity and strategies need to consider a longer timeframe compared to annual crops, which makes the anticipation of future developments and trends more critical.
Knowledge and education are of uttermost importance to train the managers of this agriculture sector. Teaching programs should provide students competencies to analyze and conceptualize new agro-ecosystems more resilient to the evolution of climatic constraints (e.g. frost, heat, drought, salt) and biotic pressure in either traditional growing area or territories becoming favorable to these crops due to climate change. This subject area is based in a rich academic partnership involving recognized institutions in the field covering a wide range of agricultural and socio-economic contexts, Indeed, the network join forces and expertise from the various competence fields (plant physiology & genetic, agronomy and soil science, data sciences, economic and social science) to build new teaching programs on fleshy and fermented fruits grown in perennial training systems as well as mixed cropping systems or agroforestry. We see the new subject area “Wine & Soft Fruits” as center of this network for knowledge transfer between students of ELLS partners and beyond, towards politicians and other stakeholder, and to industry and farmers.

Activities

In a first step we aim to establish the new subject area “Wine & Soft Fruits” within the ELLS community and other existing networks in link with fruit production and processing. Thereby we will establish a prospering platform for exchange of students, joint and challenged based learning, and knowledge transfer to empower innovation and sustainability.

2024:     Open a workshop from the NewClim consortium (New training methods to Manage Climatic & ecological transitions in perennial fruit crops (newclim.eu)) to 3 PhD students from the ELLS network. The workshop is organized at SLU which is together with AGRO member of the ELLS network. The objectives will be to design challenges in the field of viticulture and pomiculture according to the Challenged-Based Learning methodology (CBL). 

2025:     Soft Fruit Network by aligning an ELLS student workshop (“Ecophysiological phenotyping and fruit growth responses to environmental constraints”) with an international meeting of the ONEOVITI consortium in Vienna at BOKU in May 2025. OENOVITI international, is a network of 70 academic and industrial partners to support joint initiatives in vine and wine research and training. ELLS students will benefit from the international network by connecting to research and industry, and the SA “Wine & Soft Fruits” will become recognized. A meeting will also be organized as part of this event with the NewClim consortium to co-organize the summer school of 2026.

Contact Information