Abstract
Grapevine trunk diseases (GTDs) are one of the main biotic stress factors affecting this crop. The use of tolerant grapevine cultivars would be an interesting and sustainable alternative strategy to control GTDs. To date, most studies about cultivar susceptibility have been conducted under controlled conditions, and little information is available about tolerance to natural infections caused by GTD fungi. The objectives of this study were: (i) to identify tolerant cultivars to GTD fungi within a Spanish germplasm collection, based on external symptoms observed in the vineyard; and (ii) to characterize the pathogenic mycoflora associated with symptomatic vines. For this purpose, a grapevine germplasm collection including 22 white and 25 red cultivars was monitored along three growing seasons, and their susceptibility for esca foliar symptoms was assessed. Fungi were identified by using morphological and molecular methods. Cultivars such as, ‘Monastrell’, ‘Graciano’, ‘Cabernet Franc’, ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’, ‘Syrah’, ‘Moscatel de Alejandría’, ‘Sauvignon Blanc’, and ‘Airén’ displayed high susceptibility to GTDs, whereas others such as ‘Petit Verdot’, ‘Pinot Noir’, ‘Chardonnay’, and ‘Riesling’ were considered as tolerant. The prevalent fungal species isolated from symptomatic vines were Phaeomoniella chlamydospora (27.9% of the fungal isolates), Cryptovalsa ampelina (24.6%), and Dothiorella sarmentorum (21.3%).
Highlights
Grapevine trunk diseases (GTDs) are currently considered one of the main types of biotic stress of this crop due to reducing both yield and lifespan of vineyards, which results in substantial economic losses to the grape and wine industry worldwide [1]
There was only one vine (2.7%) of the ‘Tempranillo’ cultivar showing GTDexternal symptoms; no GTDs-fungi were isolated from this vine. This is the first study aimed at assessing the cultivar susceptibility to natural infections caused by fungal GTDs pathogens in a grapevine germplasm collection, in a Designation of Origin (DO) in Spain
Several infection assays have reported varying GTD resistance of grapevine cultivars to these pathogens [13,17,20,23,24,27], clones [27,28], and rootstocks [29,30,31,32,33], but the vine defense mechanisms underlying those observations, which would explain the tolerance or susceptibility of the different cultivars, have not yet been completely elucidated
Summary
Grapevine trunk diseases (GTDs) are currently considered one of the main types of biotic stress of this crop due to reducing both yield and lifespan of vineyards, which results in substantial economic losses to the grape and wine industry worldwide [1]. GTDs are characterized by presenting a broad diversity of internal wood and foliar symptoms, resulting in an overall decline and eventual death of the affected plants [2]. These diseases are as old as vine cultivation; their impact and significance have only been recognized in the early 1990s, when wine growers and the wine industry began to worry about the economic losses that they caused [1]. It is difficult to associate visual symptoms with causal agents
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