Life Cycle Assessment of grape production. Potential environmental benefits of an alternative solution for fungal diseases control

In the project Grape4Vine an innovative solution was developed. In detail, the Grape4vine project aims at exploiting winegrowing byproducts that would be normally treated as wastes, to produce biotechnological means for controlling downy mildew and powdery mildew in the circular economy context. In detail, the Grape4Wine solution is based on dsRNA (double-stranded RNA) able to induce RNA interference (RNAi) and silencing pathogen or plant genes necessary for infection and thus avoid the onset of plant disease. However, to assess the sustainability of the proposed solution, the first step is to quantify the impact of fungal disease control during grape cultivation. In this context, the aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental impact of grape cultivation by paying particular attention to pest and disease control. To this purpose, the Life Cycle Assessment approach was applied to data collected in different viticulture farms located in northern Italy.