Addressing organic viticulture environmental burdens by better understanding causes of inter-annual impacts variations

Summary

Organic viticulture is developing rapidly due to consumers demand and state incentives in some EU countries. Nevertheless, it has shown higher inter-annual variability in its environmental impacts than conventional viticulture. Therefore, the organic winegrowers would benei from a better understanding of this variability in order to better address their environmental impacts. A study was conducted in four contrasted pedoclimatic conditions and two contrasted years in terms of climate and of pest and disease pressure. LCAs of organic wine grape was calculated based on detailed inventories of data from the eight real vineyard situations. Main contributor to impacts was diesel combustion. The inter-annual variation was different between the plots. The impacts that varied the most were teh freshwater and soil eco-toxicities, marine eutrophication, freshwater eutrophication and metal depletion. The main agricultural operations contributing to impact variations were desease management due to climatic conditions variations.