Regional Institute of Wine and Oil

Color measurement in the field

At the IRVV multiparametric sensor for non-destructive analysis
On 8 July 2011, a technical training meeting was held on the use of the Multiplex 3 portable instrumentation, purchased by the IRVV. The training day was attended by technicians from the IRVV, the University of Palermo - Tree Cultivation Department and the Settesoli, Donnafugata and Colomba bianca wineries.
The engineer of the supplier company, Laurent Florin, reported on the physical prerequisites for the functioning of the instrument and its potential

in relation to the objectives that the winery pursues:
· Selection of vineyards according to the different accumulation of anthocyanins
· Evaluation of heterogeneity within a vineyard
· Optimization of the harvest date
· Cartography/zoning of the vineyards investigated
The Multiplex instrument is a portable multi-parametric optical sensor which carries out real-time non-destructive measurements of constitutive and induced polyphenols on clusters, and is based on the principle of chlorophyll fluorescence. Fluorimetry measures the light re-emitted after being absorbed by the grapes; the data is recorded on a memory card and later downloaded to Excel.
The Multiplex has already been used in Australia, France, Spain, Italy (Tuscany, Sicily); the Institute plans to use it in this harvest to test it to measure the accumulation of anthocyanins on native varieties. Once the procedure has been validated and specific correlations made between the data from the traditional chemical analysis and that produced by the Multiplex, it is believed that it will be made available to Sicilian wine companies through a specific service.