The Role of Italy in the Use of Advanced Plant Genomic Techniques on Fruit Trees: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Climate change is deeply impacting the food chain production, lowering quality and yield. In this context, the international scientific community has dedicated many efforts to enhancing resilience and sustainability in agriculture. Italy is among the main European producers of several fruit trees; therefore, national research centers and universities undertook several initiatives to maintain the specificity of the ‘Made in Italy’ label. Despite their importance, fruit crops are suffering from difficulties associated with the conventional breeding approaches, especially in terms of financial commitment, land resources availability, and long generation times. The ‘new genomic techniques’ (NGTs), renamed in Italy as ‘technologies for assisted evolution’ (TEAs), reduce the time required to obtain genetically improved cultivars while precisely targeting specific DNA sequences. This review aims to illustrate the role of the Italian scientific community in the use of NGTs, with a specific focus on Citrus, grapevine, apple, pear, chestnut, strawberry, peach, and kiwifruit. For each crop, the key genes and traits on which the scientific community is working, as well as the technological improvements and advancements on the regeneration of local varieties, are presented. Lastly, a focus is placed on the legal aspects in the European and in Italian contexts.

Trunk Injection Delivery of Biocontrol Strains of Trichoderma spp. Effectively Suppresses Nut Rot by Gnomoniopsis castaneae in Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.)

“…Nut rot by G. castaneae today represents the main cause of chestnut fruit deterioration. The disease strongly curtails nut production in the areas where it is present, the pathogen irremediably compromising nut quality and organoleptic features, making the fruit tissue chalky and inedible [ 11 , 13 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. As the fungus can live as an endophyte in latency in chestnut organs and tissues, the application of effective control measures is troublesome and relies only on post-harvest treatments: water curing, sterilization and chemicals application [ 10 , 16 ].…”

Efficient protocol of de novo shoot organogenesis from somatic embryos for grapevine genetic transformation

“…Furthermore, the genetic transformation of three different types of explants such as MB slices, cotyledons, and hypocotyls derived from SEs, demonstrated that the cotyledons are the most efficient starting tissue for the cultivar Thompson Seedless, and the only type of explant capable of leading to the regeneration of a genetically transformed shoot in the Ancellotta cultivar. These novel in vitro regeneration and genetic transformation protocols on fruit plants such as grapevine, in its wine grape and table grape varieties, are as essential as ever for the application of new and emerging modern biotechnologies aimed at promoting tolerance to pathogens and pests, increasing resilience to abiotic stresses, and improving agronomic traits such as productivity, fruit quality, and seedlessness ( Sabbadini et al., 2021 ; Nerva et al., 2023 ).…”

“…There is no unique developmental pathway to obtain somatic embryos, indeed, it has been demonstrated that somatic embryo formation can occur directly or indirectly from a starting explant, and the entire process can be initiated from differentiated somatic cells or pericycle-like stem cells ( Fehér, 2019 ; Capriotti et al., 2022 ). Recent publications highlighted the importance to have well-established somatic embryogenesis regeneration protocols for the application of “new genomic techniques” (NGTs) on additional cultivars and rootstocks of Italian and international interest ( Forleo et al., 2021 ; Capriotti et al., 2022 ; Nerva et al., 2023 ).…”

Boosting grapevine breeding for climate-smart viticulture: from genetic resources to predictive genomics

“…The CRISPR/Cas9 is currently the more cost-effective and efficient system adopted for genome editing, and it has been proved adaptable for woody plants. Several reviews have recently summarized the major outcomes of NBTs use in fruit plants, including grapevines ( Campa et al., 2023 ; Nerva et al., 2023 ). In the context of promoting a climate-smart viticulture, noteworthy successes have been achieved with grapevine plants edited for cold resistance ( Wang et al., 2021b ), or water stress tolerance due to the inactivation of VvEPFL9-1 in a table grape variety via CRISPR/Cas9 ( Clemens et al., 2022 ), and all efforts aimed at obtaining grapevine plants resistant to pathogens ( Pirrello et al., 2023 ).…”