Howdy Kenneth, glad to see your reply.

I would look at what perennial locally native grasses put into the soil in arid areas, and how old that carbon is with carbon dating.  This has been done a few times, like here in California, and the results in an unplowed perennial native grassland in an arid area, t to lock up the carbon for several thousand years.

But we need researchers to date the soil carbon from many arid parts of the planet from underneath the roots of the perennial grasses, to get an idea if the carbon being locked-away is only for decades or maybe for several thousand years as I am suspecting. And the leaves of perennial native grasses are much more resistant to decay than the annual grasses, so might contribute a lot of carbon to the soil also. 

I have to disagree with Kenneth yet again! The main use of vines is to produce wine. If the wine is "put down" then the carbon in the alcohol will be sequestered, until it is finally drunk :-)

The by-products of vineyards are the musk from the grapes and the leaves and shoots produced during pruning.  I don't know whether they are just left to rot returning their carbon to the atmosphere or whether they  are added to the soil where by increasing the soil carbon they do in fact sequester atmospheric CO2.

Dear Kenneth,

Yes, actually I have done some back of then envelope calculations, based on the massive amount of carbon that the perennial native plants have put into our California soils, that we now utilize for probably 90% of our farm lands.

Fortunately, there are about one billion acres worldwide that are currently marginal arid grazing and abandoned farm lands lands that not too long ago, were arid grasslands to the horizon, where the carbon could be stored for a very long time.

By measuring the amount of carbon in the soil under the native perennial grasses at different depths, then check the age, you might be surprised at how nice the billion acres might perform for that task in the future?

Thanks for all of your replies, What I've actually understood is that Mr. Kenneth disagrees that row cropping might contribute to carbon sequestration while Mr. Alastair disagrees. I would like to know if there is any additional factor that may contribute to carbon sequestration. 

In fact, I'm using the wine carbon calculator to calculate the carbon equivalent emitted/absorbed. I've checked the row cropping and it seems according to the model that it is almost negligible compared to the photosynthesis-respiration process.

The vines themselves will probably be carbon neutral, but whatever  you plant in between the rows of the vines could make a significant contribution, like the local perennial native grasses--not the weedy agricultural pasture types, but the original bunch grasses for example.

Regards,

Dr. Mitra

Getting back to Samah Jradi question, I think the question here is about carbon sequestration in the vineyards of Bordeaux, and if so, my suggestion is native local perennial bunchgrasses in the rows between the vines.  

Some of our California vineyard owners are planting these as permanent ground covers instead of tilling between the rows each year, using some of our 300 species of California native bunchgrass species. and sometimes also use our perennial herbaceous wildflowers like the California poppy, picture attached.

Thanks a lot for this interesting disscussion, however as Craig said I'm really interested in the carbon sequestration in the vineyards. Thanks a lot for your suggestion Craig, I've watched a video also recommending that in which they focus on enlarging the roots through liquid injection, VAM fungi etc to help in storing more CO2 into the soil. So if this has been used in California for a while, can you estimate how the percentage of carbon sequestration has changed before and after the implementation of this procedure? 

thanks Mr. Mitra for the book suggestion.

In the recent past, erosion control was the only issue that drove the planting of perennial herbaceous plants and bunch grasses in California, to produce a permanent ground cover that does not need summer irrigation to survive.  

Whereas the old method of managing the rows between the vines was to plant an exotic annual ground cover to stop winter rain erosion, then till it in summer. However, that summer tilling in steep hilly areas could cause erosion problems in early winter, before the exotic annual seedlings had a chance to get established. 

It has only been in the last ten years, that California has been looking at agricultural processes to sequester carbon, in our vineyards and other farm lands, and you can read many articles if you Google, "California vineyard ground cover carbon sequestration"

I apologize for getting off the topic of your question in my original answers, and hope that all of our future answers will be able to help you with your question about vineyards in France.

Thanks again Mr. Craig for sharing your knowledge. That's really helpful.

In California we grow our crops mainly in two kinds of soils, both with the highest amount of carbon has already been sequestered by the native plants that grew there for millions of years-- the drained freshwater wetlands/peat soils, and the native bunchgrass soils.  

The other soils we have in California are forest trees and desert soils, but neither have had much carbon sequestered by either the trees or the desert plants.  

I read a long time ago, that our species is parasitic on high-carbon soils, and those occur either under perennial grass cover or in freshwater wetland areas.

Hi Samah,

There was a session yesterday at the EGU in Vienna entitled "Biogeosciences and wine: Management-related and environmental processes that influence the vineyard ecosystem (co-organized)". A bit late for you to attend :-( but the abstracts for both the oral sessions and the posters are available here:

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2016/session/21309

Some of the actual posters may get posted later this week, but anyway you can always contact the author of any item you find useful.

Cheers, Alastair.

Something that has probably never been done, is to see what grows around grapes in the wild and see if any of their companion native plants would be useful to recreate a truncated "grape ecosystem"?  

Another option would be to get a charcoal kiln (made in India or China) and use waste material like saw dust or wood chips, to produce  biochar for your grape vineyard soils?  I know a local guy in the Santa Cruz Mountains, whenever he trims the trees on his property, he makes the cut branches them into biochar to add back to his forest soils where he likes.  

I have a project in Haiti where we are going to use sugar cane waste into biochar and then into briquettes to burn instead of cutting down more trees for cooking fuel, that you can see at http://www.haitiag.org.

Other than perennial native grasses, or recreating a truncated wild grape ecosystem, adding biochar created by local waste material would be the fastest way to sequester carbon in a grape vineyard, and probably would have a lot of benefit to the vines?

Regenerative farming practices help sequester more carbon.

Edaphic factors

Biochar production and its applications to soil to improved its fertility.