Abstract

Vineyards started 20 years ago in Southern Chile, making viticulture a promising agricultural option for farmers in this area, increasing 7-fold during the last 5 years. However, vineyards of Southern Chile reach lower yields and lower sugar concentrations than those of the central zone, mainly due to the edaphoclimatic drivers such as low temperature, spring frost, and management constraints. Moreover, the impacts of climate change on rainfall have increased the water deficit in this area, mainly during grapevine phenological stages of high-water requirements (bloom, fruit set to veraison, and veraison to harvest). These antecedents support the urgency to validate strategies aimed at improving water use efficiency (WUE) of vineyards in Southern Chile through techniques such as the use of cover crops and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI). In addition, inter-row and intra-row cover crops can decrease both, plant water consumption and transpiration losses, as well as improve soil water infiltration. The high amount of winter rainfalls and fertility of soils in this zone, explaining also, the excessive vigor of vines, becomes possible through the adoption of these floor management techniques. Otherwise, RDI is currently proposed as a saving-water technique that controls vine vigor and increases fruit quality in vineyards. Nevertheless, currently, the findings are conflicting, and the most of studies have been performed in arid or semi-arid regions, but few in the neither Mediterranean nor humid regions such as those of Southern Chile. Therefore, according to the literature analyzed in zones with similar climatic conditions in Southern Chile, this review aimed to critically discuss how the strategies of cover crops and regulated deficit irrigation could improve the water use efficiency, vine balance, and enological properties in vineyards production of Southern Chile.