Abstract
Climate change forecasts suggest temperature increases and lower rainfall rates, both of which challenge viticulture, particularly in semi-arid areas where water availability is critical. In this scenario, the use of the genetic variability in grapevine varieties reported around the world represents an important strategy for the selection of climate-resilient cultivars. In this work, physiological and metabolomics analyses were conducted to compare the water deficit stress (WDS) responses of red and white, local and widespread grapevines cultivars. Leaf gas exchange, water use efficiency (WUE) and water relation parameters were determined in plants under well-watered and WDS conditions alongside assessment of the levels of foliar primary metabolites using gas-chromatography coupled to mass-spectrometry. Results denote that red and white local cultivars displayed more adapted physiological performance under WDS as compared to the widely-distributed ones. Multivariate analyses and specific changes in leaf primary metabolites indicate genotype-specific responses of local cultivars as compared to widespread ones. Differences in ascorbate-related and shikimate/phenylpropanoid metabolism could explain the better physiological performance under WDS in red local as compared to widespread cultivars. On the other hand, coordinated changes in respiratory- and stress-related sugars and amino acids could underlie the better WUE under WDS in the white local cultivar. All these results suggest several metabolic targets that could be useful as metabolic markers or for metabolic engineering in grapevine breeding programs to improve drought tolerance.
Highlights
Water availability is one of the main limiting factors affecting crop production in arid and semi-arid regions
All cultivars were subjected to two irrigation regimes, well-watered (WW) and water deficit stress (WDS) as defined by stomatal conductance
Under WDS, the values were more variable; soil water content (SWC) dropped to values close to 27.7 ± 0.8%
Summary
Water availability is one of the main limiting factors affecting crop production in arid and semi-arid regions. Recent studies suggest that these two strategies can occur within the same variety depending on the experimental conditions (e.g., climatic conditions, growing season, water treatment, field or controlled conditions) so, even if a continuum between isohydric to anisohydric behavior exists, different strategies in response to drought have been identified and its implications in WUE deserve to be further studied [10,22,23,24,25] In this sense, local grapevine varieties from the Balearic Islands have been described as physiologically better adapted to deficient irrigation, with regard to WUE [10,13]. A better understanding of the genotype-specific molecular responses to WDS and their link to physiological responses is still necessary in order to achieve a more efficient viticulture in the future
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