There is no one, absolute way

Between 1850 and 1890, European vineyards were subjected to powdery and downy mildews, new and aggressive plant diseases never seen in previous centuries. Winegrowers had to learn how to combat this in a systematic way using sulfur and copper if they wanted to save their grape production. If this was not enough, sometime later a phylloxera plague that killed countless vines and forced farmers to totally uproot their vineyards and replant them with rootstocks from the United States that were immune to the plague. At the time, it seemed as if European winegrowing had suffered a fatal blow. And this could not be blamed on the excessive use of chemicals in the vineyard, because they had not been used before; nor because the practice of one-crop farming, because a variety of crops had always been farmed; nor because of a loss of biodiversity, given the abundance of varieties that had existed before. Many farmers, in the end, switched to cultivating other crops.

In the 20th century, winegrowing gradually made a comeback thanks to the efficient use of pesticides and chemical products. And it was chemistry, in the end, which played the leading role with the development of new products including fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. In the current century, there has been a growing trend towards using fewer chemicals in order to obtain a healthier fruit and safeguard the health of the consumer and the environment.

Today the effort to reduce the use of chemicals in the vineyard is taking place on several fronts including replacing or integrating chemical pesticides with more natural products; through employing organic farming methods, which limits the use of chemical products to just sulfur and copper; or switching to biodynamic farming that excludes the use of any chemical products. But it does not end here and systems are being developed to produce vines that are resistant to disease and thus need less chemicals aids. The recent identification of the genome sequence of grapes has opened the door to new and important opportunities.  This includes identifying certain genes responsible for resisting disease in one variety and transferring them to others that do not have it. This is done using practices that are not the same as genetically modifying organisms (GMO). For this reason botanists need to pay greater attention to the genetic makeup of the plants rather than focusing on cloning weaker vines. In order to bolster the health of a vineyard, all practices must be taken into consideration that enhance the vitality of the soil. The path to reduce the use of chemicals in the vineyard is a long one and to succeed it must be followed using all the instruments available.