Oakville Station Seminar Series in July 

The first installment in the 2016 Oakville Station Seminar Series was held on July 22 in the Julio Gallo Conference Room. Professor Antonello Bonfante and colleagues from the Italian National Research Council delivered two presentations on mechanistic modeling of vineyard terroir in north-central Italy. The speakers focused on the importance of relating ground-truthing and cross-validating a spatially dense grid that contribute to a spatial decision system in the water balance of vineyards. 

This seminar was attended by 40 members of the North Coast viticulture and enology community that also enjoyed a catered dinner and local wines provided by the UC Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology. 


Oakville Station Seminar Series in August 


The second installment of the seminar series was held on August 12. Dr. Johann Martinez gave a talk titled "Effects of Global Climate Change on Berry Flavonoid Chemistry" and Dr. Gregory Gambetta from University of Bordeaux covered "How Grapevines Break Down and Put Themselves Together During and After a Drought". Professor Gregory Gambetta's presentation focused on fundamental physiology of water transport from the rhizospehere to the root tissue and related it to whole plant physiology of the grapevine by displaying the response of grapevines to withholding irrigation and then rewatering. 

The second portion of the seminar was delivered by Dr. Johann Martinez. His lecture focused on the effects of drought and how the impact may be alleviated by ultraviolet light enhancement in grapevine canopies. Dr. Martinez also gave an update on the color shade net trial at the Oakville Experimental Vineyard. The third section of the seminar was a tour of the Experimental Station's vineyards by CE Specialist Kaan Kurtural, and a demonstration delivered by Dr. Luca Brillante. Dr. Brillante demonstrated a stereo-vision visible light camera that is being used for crop forecasting in vineyards around the state of California. 

This seminar series was attended by 48 members of the North Coast viticulture and enology community, as well as growers and vintners from the Central Coast of California. The attendees enjoyed a catered barbeque dinner and local wines provided by the UC Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology.