Esca‐affected grapevine leaf metabolome is clone‐ and vintage‐dependent

Abstract

Esca is a complex grapevine trunk disease caused by wood‐rotting ascomycetes and basidiomycetes and leading to several foliar and wood symptoms. Given that the esca expression can be influenced by several environmental, physiological, and genetic factors, foliar symptoms are inconsistent in incidence and prevalence and may appear 1 year but not the following. We have previously reported a clone‐dependent expression of the disease in cv Chardonnay. Owing to metabolome analysis, we could discriminate the metabolite fingerprint of green leaves collected on diseased vines of clones 76 and 95. These clone‐dependent fingerprints were year‐dependent in intensity and nature. The present work was conducted to determine if the clone‐dependent disease expression observed is specific to Chardonnay or if it also occurs in another cultivar. A plot located in the Jura vineyard (France) and planted with both 1004 and 1026 clones of Trousseau, a cultivar highly susceptible to esca, was thus selected and studied during 2017 and 2018. A year‐dependent variation of the symptoms expression was first observed and a possible relationship with rainfall is hypothesized and discussed. Moreover, a higher percentage of the clone 1026 vines expressed disease, compared to the 1004 ones, suggesting the higher susceptibility of this clone. Finally, metabolomic analyses of the remaining green leaves (i.e, without symptom expression) of partial esca‐apoplectic vines allowed us to confirm a clone‐dependent metabolic response to the disease. The metabolite fingerprints obtained differed in nature and intensity to those previously reported for Chardonnay and also between years.

Description of the relationship between trunk disease expression and meteorological conditions, irrigation and physiological response in Chardonnay grapevines

“…Thus, the effective water received by the plant seemed to have played a major role in symptom development in our study; this is supported by the PCA analysis, which showed that, out of all the meteorological variables, effective water had the highest correlation with symptom occurrence (Tables 2S to 5S, Figure 1S). Similar yeardependent GTD foliar symptom expression is reported in the literature (Mugnai et al, 1999;Fischer and Peighami-Ashnaei, 2019;Moret et al, 2020). In general, drought has been frequently considered as a pre-disposing factor for woody plant declines in forest trees (Desprez-Loustau et al, 2006;Piou et al, 2006) and grapevine (Surico et al, 2006;Claverie et al, 2020), because the reduced water availability limits photosynthesis and thus the carbon allocation useful for growth and defence response.…”

Fomitiporia mediterranea M. Fisch., the historical Esca agent: a comprehensive review on the main grapevine wood rot agent in Europe

“…Nevertheless, because a Fmed-Pch-Pmin interaction has been demonstrated, a relationship is likely between those compounds and Fmed (Sparapano et al, 2001b;Bruez et al, 2020). For this reason, results from most metabolomic studies in leaves responding to "Esca disease"-associated pathogens should be treated with caution, when attempting to understand exact plant responses to Fmed (Goufo et al, 2019;Moret et al, 2021). Further studies are necessary to precisely determine grapevine metabolite production burst specifically in response to Fmed colonization.…”

“…ii) No completely resistant grape cultivar has been reported, but cultivar and clone contributions to symptom expression and severity have been observed and reviewed (Marchi, 2001;Quaglia et al, 2009;Murolo and Romanazzi, 2014;Kraus et al, 2019;Moret et al, 2019;Songy et al, 2019a;Moret et al, 2021).…”

Increasing our knowledge on grapevines physiology to increase yield, quality and sustainably

“…Yield loss can be as much as 20%. Leaf metabolite fingerprints have been performed on two different clones of Trousseau, an esca‐susceptible cultivar (Moret et al, 2021). A clone‐ and year‐dependent metabolic response is demonstrated.…”