Let's Talk Sex..(long/boring/XXX/no pics)

Specifically...let's talk about grape sex. Man....I can hear all those back buttons being clicked already.
As I was reading in d'Agato's book on Dindarella, he describes:

Pelara is a biotype of Dindarella that has been hit with floral abortion and so its grape cluster looks very sparse & scrawny.

In the section on Timorasso, he discusses:

It also suffers from floral abortion, with many flowers never bearing fruit.

1. So it almost sounds that "floral abortion" is a disease or malady that can strike a grapevine, not that it's just merely that the grapevine is sterile. Is that so??

2. I find no other reference to floral abortion being a problem w/ Timorasso. It almost sounds like it is something that comes & goes w/ that variety. Anybody have any direct information on Timorasso??

Man...grape sex is so complicated. Makes people sex seem so...simple.

Tom

There's not a whole lot of information out on the net on floral abortion in grapes.

From 6/24/08 on WLDG:

Not much on biology...so way out of my area of expertise here, only know neutrons.
Supposedly, grapes are hermaphroditic..stamens and pistels and all that stuff I don't understand. But they are self-polinating and I gather this pollen falls off the stamen onto the pistel, the earth moves, and...voila...a grape is born. Pretty exciting...so they say.
The variety Picolit was nearly driven extinct be a so-called malady known as "floral abortion", where the flower would form, and then drop off and never produce a berry, resulting in absymally low yields. My understanding is that "floral abortion" is not a disease, but simply the fact that Picolit is sterile and will not self-polinate. So, it is necessary to interplant Verduzzo or something amongst the Picolit to provide the pollen for Pilicit to germinate into a berry. I gather this pollen is spread by the wind or on the feetsies of the bees out there in the vnyd.
I was reading about Timorasso (a very interesting wine from the Piedmonte, somelike a fruity
Arneis is how I would describe it) and that it also suffers from "floral abortion", which I presume implies that Timorasso is also sterile.
So a few questions here:
1. Are there other varieties in the wine world that are sterile?? And they would be??

2. Does the PiculitNeri that is grown in Friuli also suffer from being sterile? What varieties
are interplanted, if it does??

3. If the pistel of a flower is pollinated by the pollen from another variety, rather than it's own
stamen; is the resulting berry the same as if it were pollinated by its oown stamen?? If it is different, that implies that Picolit interplanted w/ Verduzzo would differ from Picolit interplanted with PinotGrigio. Or is there much more incestuous fornication going on out there in the vnyd than I realize?? How close must the interplantings of Verduzzo with the Picolit be to get a good set?? What kind of yield can you get off Picolit by this interplanting?
I suspect the cross pollinated grapes must be different then self-polinated. As I recall, when HaroldOlmo was developing his crosses, he would put a big baggie over the flowers of one variety and then spread the pollen from the other variety inside the baggie (wonder if the earth moved for Olmo when he was doing this?) and then propagated the crossed variety from the seeds of the resulting grapes. Sound pretty tedious to me.

4. As I understand it, if you have high winds and rains during the flowering, you get a poor set and a resulting low yield. Is this because the the pollen gets scattered hither & yon and doesn't hook up with the pistel like it's supposed to?

Sorry...probably one of today's more esoteric posts...but sorta curious.
Tom

and a followup post in that thread:

My response to a post on another board:

John,
I think Robin is just repeating the story of "floral abortion" that is prevalent in nearly all the literature that you read about Picolit. I believe Robin is incorrect.
When I was doing the original article in 1981 in Vintage magazine, I talked at some length w/ HaroldOlmo. He cites research of DrGiovanni Cargnello at the Conegliano Institute. That research indicates that Picolit is a variety that is purely female flowers and, thus, is not hermaphroditic or self-polinating. Thus Picolit is not suffering from this mysterious malady of "floral abortion" that it somehow developed, but is merely a sterile variety.
Olmo suggested to me how this "floral abortion" malady evolved. Most of the early Italian plantings were field blends w/ much interplanting of of varieties who could provide the pollen to the Picolit. Thus the sterility of Picolit was not apparent. As the Italian vnyds moved to the more modern practice of planting varieties in blocks, the sterility of Picolit became obvious and they thought it was some disease, which they labeled "floral abortion".
At Conegliano, they developed a Verduzzo/Picolit cross that was self-polinating. DarrellCorti is of the opinion (gasp...Darrel Corti..an opinion!!) that most of the Picolit from Friuli is not true Picolit, but the Verduzzo/Picolit cross.
Hopefully, CaroleMeredith will be chiming in her to answer all my sex questions (well...maybe not all of them!!)
If you want a copy of my Vintage magazine Picolit article, I can send you one. Or anybody else, for that matter.
Tom

In that same thread,

1. Brain Gilp pointed that the berry would be the same if it was cross-pollinated by another variety, but the seed in that berry would not. OK...that makes sense.

2. MarkLipton stated that Fiano was another was another example of a sterile variety that requires bees to pollinate the female. I can find no other reference to that being the case w/ Fiano and d'Agata doesn't mention there being a problem w/ Fiano.

Tom

.
1. So it almost sounds that "floral abortion" is a disease or malady that can strike a grapevine, not that it's just merely that the grapevine is sterile. Is that so??

I have never heard the term "floral abortion" before but it sounds like what is known as "coulure" where the flowers don't form properly, die and fall off. Coulure is a malady that can hit any vine as I understand it.

There's not a whole lot of information out on the net on floral abortion in grapes.

Google coulure and millerandage. Millerandage is when unfertilised flowers produce small, round, seedless grapes in the bunch.

3. If the pistel of a flower is pollinated by the pollen from another variety, rather than it's own stamen; is the resulting berry the same as if it were pollinated by its oown stamen??

Yes, it is the seeds that carry the genes of the parents, and even if both are from the same variety, the seeds will not produce identical offspring as the parents.

I suspect the cross pollinated grapes must be different then self-polinated.

I don't thinks so - the seeds may have different genes, but the grape will be the same.

As I recall, when HaroldOlmo was developing his crosses, he would put a big baggie over the flowers of one variety and then spread the pollen from the other variety inside the baggie (wonder if the earth moved for Olmo when he was doing this?) and then propagated the crossed variety from the seeds of the resulting grapes. Sound pretty tedious to me.

I expect a small paintbrush was used to get the pollen on the mother flower. This technique was standard until recently. The bag is to stop the flowers being fertilised naturally. When creating crosses you want to ensure the seeds carry the genes of the chosen varieties.

However the bag method is not foolproof and a number of crosses later turned out to be not what they were thought to be, e.g. Muller Thurgau, Roobernet .....[/quote]

Grapes can be produced when the flower has not been fertilised (see Millerandage above) which is a malady in wine production because such grapes are smaller thanothers on the bunch, but non-fertilised grapes are extremely important in the table grape business where seedless grapes are desired. Sultana (AKA Thomson Seedless) was one of the early ones but there's a lot now and in UK supermarkets the only table grapes on offer are seedless. Sultana has a defective pistil thus it cannot be fertilised and its grapes are seedless.

The grapevines growth cycle could be divided into five stages; (1) bud break to flowering, (2) flowering to fruit set, (3) fruit set to veraison, (4) veraison to harvest and (5) harvest to leaf fall. “Floral abortion” (flowers themselves not fully developing) would occur sometime between flowering and fruit set (maybe the result of lack of water and/or heat stress during flowering phase). Similar to the development of “green shots” or “berry shots” (“fruit abortion”). These could be thought of as the vines' way of “thinning the yield”.

Salute

I have never heard the term "floral abortion" before but it sounds like what is known as "coulure" where the flowers don't form properly, die and fall off. Coulure is a malady that can hit any vine as I understand it.
Google coulure and millerandage. Millerandage is when unfertilised flowers produce small, round, seedless grapes in the bunch.

I believe that is correct, Peter. As I understand it, Picolit is subject to millerandage simply because the variety is sterile.
And then there are other varieties that are hermaphroditic (self-pollinating) but are prone to millerandage. And then
you can have bad weather conditions (high winds, heavy rains, lazy bees) that will produce millerandage on perfectly fertile
hermaphroditic varieties.
Does that sound right??
Tom

“Grapes can be produced when the flower has not been fertilised….”

I assume even seedless grapes go through a flowering and fruit set phase. I always thought right after “fertilization” (or some other “stimulation”) the seed of “seedless grapes “ceases” to develop or ripen but the ovary of the flower continues to “ripen” into a berry. What “stimulates” or “triggers the ovary of the flower to start ripening into a berry? (A ripe seedless grape does not look like a ripe fig).

Salute

“Grapes can be produced when the flower has not been fertilised….”

. What “stimulates” or “triggers the ovary of the flower to start ripening into a berry? (A ripe seedless grape does not look like a ripe fig).

I don't know. My understanding is that some varieties need stimulation and other's don't. Sorry, I don't understand the fig reference.

What I really meant was that no matter if a grape vine is seeded or seedless it goes through basically the same cycle. (Bud-break, flowering, pollination (or some other stimulation), if seeded variety fertilization occurs, if seedless variety no fertilization, most of the flower’s structures falls off and fruit set occurs (the ovary ripens into a berry). Isn’t it possible for a seedless variety (I understand that the flower structure of a seedless variety makes cross-pollination improbable or impossible) to be cross-pollinated with a seeded variety and produce a berry with seed?

Salute

Isn’t it possible for a seedless variety (I understand that the flower structure of a seedless variety makes cross-pollination improbable or impossible) to be cross-pollinated with a seeded variety and produce a berry with seed?

Anything is possible

But those varieties bred to be seedless for the table must surely only have selected for production because they have been proved not to have seeds.

If customers purchase a bag of seedless grapes and random grapes have seed then they'll complain...

I understand that seedless grapes have faults in their flowers that make it impossible for them to be fertilised and thus produce seeds.

2. MarkLipton stated that Fiano was another was another example of a sterile variety that requires bees to pollinate the female. I can find no other reference to that being the case w/ Fiano and d'Agata doesn't mention there being a problem w/ Fiano.

Tom, I was repeating something that I'd been told at a tasting years ago. Looking into it, I find that the story is a bit different. The name Fiano comes from the Latin name Apiana, which in term derives from the Latin for bee (apia). The reason they were named after bees, though, turns out to have nothing to do with pollination: the bees were attracted to the sugary pulp of the grapes, or so says Wikipedia.

Mark Lipton