Influence on Vine Production of Innovative Covering Plastic Films.

Two commercial films, coded “YELLOW” and “NEUTRAL”, and one experimental film, coded “BASF” (provided by BASF Italia Srl), were tested in a vineyard located in Southern Italy (Castellaneta Marina, Taranto, Italy), during 2011, to assess their influence on the productive characteristic of a seedless grapevine variety. The vineyard was conducted applying the viticultural practices normally adopted for seedless varieties in the geographical area and was drip-irrigated at about 50% of the full evapotranspiration. The radiometric properties of the films were evaluated by means of laboratory tests. In the field, the main microclimatic parameters were recorded: photosynthetic photon flux, air relative humidity and temperature. The main parameters of vine ecophysiological leaf functioning were also measured. At harvest, the vine productivity and the grape quality were assessed. The radiometric tests showed that the PAR total transmissivity coefficient was 86.3% for the “BASF” film, 81.8% for the “NEUTRAL” film and 86.0 % for the “YELLOW”. By analyzing the vine production, grape yield, berry and cluster weight were found higher under the “BASF” film than under the other two types of plastic covers