Effect of Dust on Growth and Reproductive Characteristics of Grapevine (Vitis vinifera)

To investigate the effects of dust particles on physiological and yield characteristics of grapevine cv. Bidaneh Safid, a field experiment in randomized complete block design (RCBD) was conducted on 40 plants at the Malayer Grape Research Station, Iran, during 2015-2017. The treatments comprised of: 1) artificial dust (4.3 micron, on average), 2) washing vine by well water, 3) washing vine by soluble-in-water dioctyle solution (dioctyl sulfosuccinate under the brand name dioctyl) one day after spraying artificial dust, 4) washing vine after the occurrence of natural dust storm in the region with no artificial dust applied, and 5) control, dust was not applied and after dust storm vines were not washed. Analysis of variance revealed that dioctyl and dust treatment had the highest and lowest yields of 12 and 4.5 kg/vine, respectively. In addition, dust particles significantly decreased fruit set (by 21.7% as compare to dioctyl treatment), berries per bunch (57 berries per bunch as compared to dioctyl treatment (82 berries/bunch)) and weight of bunch (85 g as compared to dioctyl which was 110 g). Moreover, dust had adverse effects on lengths of shoot (decrease up to 62 cm), leaf dry weight (1.28 to 1.39 g as compared to dioctyl treatment which ranged between 1.45 and 1.55 g) and photosynthetic pigments. (e.g. chlorophyll a reduced by 1.26 mg g-1). In conclusion, washing grapevine with dioctyl and water removed dust from surface of the leaves and dust could not damage the growth and yield of the grapevine.