Application of NIR Technique for Food Safety Evaluation During the Grapes Delivery in the Cellar

The oenological sector is increasingly moving towards an improved quality of wines. To meet this requirement can be useful, at least in large cellars, use of instruments potentially capable of providing real-time information on the grapes or the first products resulting from their processing. Knowing in real time the health status of grapes might allow the grapes to split into homogeneous groups and consequently choose the treatments to be carried out in winemaking. The aim of this work is to verify the potential use of NIR technique (Near Infrared Spectroscopy) for the detection of some fungal diseases in grapes conferred in the cellar. The research was set to three years. In the first two years the assessments were made in the laboratory on samples of grapes from the same vineyard, which differ only in a different level of fungal diseases (Botrytis cinerea and Uncinula necator). In the third year the tests were conducted in a large cellar with 2360 hectares of vineyards distributed in the province of Forlì-Cesena (Italy). The laboratory evaluations on samples of grapes from the same vineyard were positives and they allowed to distinguish between the diseases and intensities of infection. An equally positive response was not found in the cellar, where similar state of health did not provide comparable results. This result is probably caused by different environmental conditions of the vineyards (soil, orography, etc.) and it limits the application of NIR.