Comparative Metabolic Profiling of Grape Skin Tissue along Grapevine Berry Developmental Stages Reveals Systematic Influences of Root Restriction on Skin Metabolome

Abstract

This research aimed to comparatively evaluate the influences of root restriction (RR) cultivation and traditional cultivation (RC) on grape berry skin metabolomics using a non-targeted metabolomics method. Two-hundred-and-ninety-one metabolites were annotated and the kinetics analyses showed that berry skin metabolome is stage- and cultivation-dependent. Our results showed that RR influences significantly the metabolomes of berry skin tissues, particularly on secondary metabolism, and that this effect is more obvious at pre-veraison stage, which was evidenced by the early and fast metabolic shift from primary to secondary metabolism. Altogether, this study provided an insight into metabolic adaptation of berry skin to RR stress and expanded general understanding of berry development.

Comparative Metabolic Profiling of Grape Pulp during the Growth Process Reveals Systematic Influences under Root Restriction

“…Recently, our team annotated 291 metabolites in the table grape 'Red Alexandria' skin tissue while studying the growth processes using a non-targeted metabolomics method. We found that RR significantly influences secondary metabolism, particularly at the pre-veraison stage, and advances coloring of the berries [21].…”

“…This could be the reason why grape berry in RR showed more flavor and aroma than those in RC. However, the changes of secondary metabolites in pulp appeared less significant compared with skin [21]. All the same, RR is a potential alternative cultivation for manufacturing practices.…”

“…Higher lipids content, especially lysoPEs, indicated that RR uses a specific lipid metabolism strategy as a potential biological mechanism for grape to fight against environmental variation. Meanwhile, the nucleotides contents accumulated in RR were higher than that in RC (Figure 4), indicating that the general responses of plants to other stresses were similar [21].…”

“…In addition to increasing grape berry sugars, some studies also found that RR can also reduce organic acids and increase amino acid contents [1,19]. The reduced organic acids in RR samples would promote amino acid biosynthesis to respond to RR stress [21].…”

“…Previous studies have shown that RR could promote resveratrol, anthocyanins, carotenoids, phenols and flavonoids biosynthesis [18,20,21]. However, most of these studies have focused on the grape berry skins, and the main studies in the pulp tissues are primary metabolites, but the pulp also contains many secondary metabolites.…”