# Tritium Behavior from Vine to Wine
## 4 Conclusions  
Tritium concentration can be used to determine the authenticity of natural products, such as wine, relying on the data of the ambient tritium levels in the region where the vine was grown. The origin of natural wine can be determined if an adequate estimation of the tritium from all environmental compartments is realized. Therefore, the vegetation stage of the studied plant, the vine, correlated with the tritium activity from the environment (rain, air, and free water of plants), may influence the OBT activity levels in the studied samples and implicitly on the wine resulting from the ripped grapes. The study of tritium activity in the vine (branches, leaves, and grapes), in its different forms--TFWT and total OBT--during the vegetation period in the above-mentioned location near ICSI showed only the normal variation specific for this area. The variation of TFWT followed the precipitation and air seasonal variations, but the OBT showed slightly different behavior. The vegetation stage of the vine correlated with the HTO (rain, air, and free water), which influenced the OBT level in the samples. A general tendency is observed for the recorded OBT activity to follow with a delay of 1-2 months, depending on the stage of vegetation and the level of tritium from precipitation and the air. This trend can be explained by the fact that the biological half-life for OBT in plants is longer than that of TFWT, although part of the total OBT analyzed is Ex-OBT, which has the same behavior as TFWT. Thus, the maximum activity of OBT is recorded more or less in autumn for all plant organs and wine, an important factor being the amount of precipitation received by plants. Considering all five years of measurements, one can observe higher values of OBT tritium levels in leaves and lower values in branches (without considering the measurement uncertainty) due to the overall mechanism of tritium transfer from the environment to plants summarized as the HTO uptake. The foliar uptake of tritium from the atmosphere influenced the tritium level in leaves, and the root uptake of tritium from the soil influenced the tritium level in branches. Another interesting behavior is the decreasing values of OBT tritium levels for leaves and grapes in November, a constant decrease over all five years, proving the influence of exchangeable organic tritium lost by the drying leaves and grapes. Figure 10: Tritium activity in annual precipitation mean and wine ethanol. The origin of a natural product can only be determined if a fair estimate of the environmental tritium levels can be ascertained corresponding to a particular botanical, as one can see for the vine and the wine. The years with a deficit in precipitation determined slightly higher values of tritium in ripped grapes and wine. This is due to the enrichment process occurring in nature that can increase tritium content in precipitation and atmospheric vapor for short or long periods. If such processes occur during the growing season, they will most likely be reflected in the OBT of the vine. In the absence of more detailed information concerning the environmental tritium level and the fractionation of tritium by meteoric and transpiration process, the useful tools to be used together with tritium level are stable isotopes of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon [32]. If the tritium values from OBT can be successfully used for the reconstruction of the tritium level in the precipitation, its use for authentication and geographical indication is much more difficult. Long periods of observation are required, but the real challenge is to obtain a useful limit of detection and a reduction of counting error by enrichment of a small volume of water [19], especially presently when legislation and equipment providers market demand changes in the routine procedure of the laboratories [33].