Understanding grapevine-microbiome interactions: implications for viticulture industry
Authors:Iratxe Zarraonaindia1,2 and Jack A. Gilbert3,4,5,6
doi: 10.15698/mic2015.05.204
Volume 2, pp. 171 to 173, published 04/05/2015.
1 Argonne National Laboratory, Institute for Genomic and Systems Biology, Argonne, Illinois, USA.
2 Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa (Bizkaia), Spain.
3 Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
4 Department of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
5 Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.
6 College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Keywords:
Merlot microbiome holobiont, biotechnological applications, Terroir
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Iratxe Zarraonaindia and Jack A. Gilbert (2015). Understanding grapevine-microbiome interactions: implications for viticulture industry. Microbial Cell 2(5): 171-173.
© 2015 Zarraonaindia and Gilbert. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Until recently, the analysis of complex communities such as that of the grapevine-microbe holobiont has been limited by the fact that most microbes are not culturable under laboratory conditions (less than 1%). However, metagenomics, the study of the genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples without the need for enrichment or of culturing, has led to open an unprecedented era in the field of microbiology. Importantly, this technological advance has now become so pervasive that it is being regularly applied to explore soils and plants of agricultural interest. Interestingly, many large companies are taking notice, with significant financial investment being used to exploring ways to manipulate the productivity, disease resistance and stress tolerance for crops by influencing the microbiome. To understand which microbes one needs to manipulate to influence this valuable characteristics, we need to sequence the microbiome and capture the genetic and hence functional metabolic information contained therein. For viticulture and other agricultural fields where the crop is also associated to particular flavor properties that may also be manipulated, understanding how the bacteria, fungi and viruses influence the development and hence chemical makeup of the crop is essential.