Relationship Between Soil Quality With Grape Growth And Composition At The Eastern Foot Of Helan Mountain Wine Production Regions

The eastern foot of Helan Mountain, a premium vintage area, was confirmed as one of the best grape growing ecological region in the world by domestic and foreign experts with its outstanding advantages of land resource, water heat coefficient and temperature difference.The grapes grown there ripped slowly and fully, with well-developed aroma, had good pigmentation, high sugar content, moderate acidity, less plant diseases and insect pests. There were still many problems restricting the development of wine industry in this semi arid region,as a variety of soil types, weak soil structure, poor nutrient conditions and so on. In order to systematic study the soil quality(soil physical, chemical and biological proprieties) and its impact on the wine grape growth, production and composition in this area, a lot of investigate and filed experiment were done in this typical vineyard thereby supplying reasonable basis for the theory and practice for the wine grape production in eastern foot of Helan Mountain.Main results were as follows:1. The statistical analysis was done in the eastern foot of Helan Mountain wine grape garden. The results indicated that:(1) the soil in eastern foot of Helan Mountain has a coarse texture with the sand content over 50% on average. Due to winter soil bury effects, there was no significant difference in 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm layers.(2) The general situation of soil aggregates was poor, the dominant soil water stable aggregate with the diameter of 0.5-0.25 mm, was less than that with a diameter >5 mm. With the planting years, the proportion of water stable soil aggregates with diameter >0.25 mm significantly increased.(3)Soil bulk density was relatively high, up to a average of 1.39 g cmP-3P, even more than a healthy gardening soil quality standard and limits the growth of root(4) The soil aeration porosity were mainly aerate porosity and capillary pore in 0-20 cm layer, capillary pores in 20-40 layer non active porosity and capillary porosity in 40-60 cm layer.(5) The field water capacity of deep soil was the highest, significantly higher than that of the sub surface soil, the saturated water content of surface soil was the highest, significantly higher than the deep soil.The variation coefficient of field capacity was high, but the saturation water content was relatively low.(6) Along the Helan Mountain areas were dominated by gravelly sand, which were not conducive for the wine grape root development; Soil of Luhuatai areas were toosticky; Soil type of Huangyangtan and Yuquanying areas were light sierozem soil and aeolian sandy soil, soil physical structure were stable; Qingtongxia and Dawukou producing areas dominated by sandy loam, ventilation was better; The main soil type of Hongsipu areas were medium loam which had good water holding capacity.2. Spatial variability of soil chemical propersity was significant in the eastern foot of Helan Mountain wine vineyard.(1) Most of the soil in this area was alkaline calcareous soil with wide p H variation of 8.11-9.21.(2) The difference of total salt content was significant between sampling site but not between different soil layers.(3)The soil organic matter here was generally low and significantly decreased with soil depth.(4)The soil available nitrogen decreased with soil depth but not reachd a significant level.(5) The variation coefficient of soil available phosphorus content was high between each layer, and decreased with soil depth.(6) Due to soil formation, available potassium content was high in surface and decreased with soil depth.(7) Soil available trace elements were in low state, and effective states were also lack except available calcium, available magnesium and available copper.3. Through the study on soil microbiological qualities, the results showed that(1) the metabolic quotient was significantly decreased with planting years. Grape cultivation reduces energy use efficiency of the process of microbial metabolism, and increased the carbon source consumption for maintaining microbial activity. Microbial respiration in 2-year vineyards, consumes the highest carbon, slight differences between years cultivation, the rate of basic soil respiration ratio and organic carbon declined with grape cultivation.(2) Soil physical factors significantly related to soil urease, phosphatase and invertase activity, 3 kinds of enzyme activity in the area mainly depends on the soil organic matter and total N content,there was an obvious positive correlation between them, which indicates the activities of these 3 enzymes could represent the fertility level in calcareous barren soil.(3) The higher microbial biomass nitrogen does not mean high ratio of microbial nitrogen and total nitrogen.The microbial nitrogen was the highest in 2-year vineyards, decreases with soil depth in 5-year vineyards, while increases with soil depth in 8-year vineyards(4) The soil microbial biomass phosphorus content of soil was between 0.28-3.00 mg kg-1, the longer of the grape cultivation, the higher of microbial biomass P, it decreases with soil depth. Fertilization lead to great increase in soil microbial biomass P, the ratio of MP and P ratio ranged from 0.23 and0.98, highest in the surface layer of 8-year vineyards.4. The relationship between grape composition and the soil quality was studied, the results reveled that:(1) the soluble solids, total phenolics and tannin accumulation of titratable acid content were higher with higher sand content, while lower acidity. The soil clay content was highly related to anthocyanin.(2) The organic matter was significantly positive related to secondary shoot number, total soluble solids, anthocyanins and tannins, andsignificantly related to root weight, root depth and total phenols, but negatively related to p H of fruit juice.(3) Soil total nitrogen and available nitrogen were positively related to grape growth indicators, and the relationship with the 100 leaf weight, shoot length, shoot number and yield reached a significant level. Phosphorus were important to 100 grain weight, the grain weight and fresh fruit weight, high phosphorus application will increase wine grape sugar content and decrease acidity. Available potassium only negatively related to p H of fruit juice, positively related with other indicators, and significantly positive related to titratable acid and total phenol.(4) Available Fe in soil significantly improved new shoots growth. Zinc has certain promoting effect on secondary shoot number, and significantly positive related to soluble solids content, available Mn significantly positive related to anthocyanins and total phenolics.(5) The grape berry sugar rapidly increased in maturity stage, while acidity decreased, stabilized laterly. Soil aeration and drainage directly affect the grape fruit size and looseness grapes.The looser of the grapes, the higher of the berry anthocyanins, and the smaller of grape fruits.(6) The activity of three enzyme low correlated to wine grapescompositaion, microbial CNP high correlated to soluble solids, while no significant difference with other indexes.(7) Soil factors involved in the wine grape berries phenolic compounds biosynthesis, the difference of wine grape quality and maturity under different soil types was significant. The wine produced from aeolian soil had improved chroma and tone and higher-quality phenols. The grapes grown on the sierozem soil had the highest total phenol and tannin contents, which affected the wine composition. The grapes grown on the irrigation silting soil had higher acidities, but the remaining indices were lower.5. The evaluating results under principal component analysis method and gray correlation analysis method were similar.(1) The weights of soil bulk density to grape wine growth was higher, which indicates the dominant factors of soil bulk density in grape wine growth in Eastern foot of Helan Mountain.(2) Soil organic matter was the highest in both two comprehensive evaluation methods, which indicated that the soil organic matter was the main factor that limiting the growth, yield and composition of wine grape. Soil available calcium have extremely high degree with wine grape anthocyanins and total phenol, which means available calcium was one of the most important indicator of grape composition in Eastern foot of Helan Mountain.(3) Comprehensive evaluation of soil microorganisms were low,while that of soil enzyme activity was high, which indicates that the effects of soil microbial environment in this areas was relatively less than soil physical and chemical properties.