Selective defoliation affects plant growth, fruit transcriptional ripening program and flavonoid metabolism in grapevine

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Marianna Fasoli¹  Giovanni Battista Tornielli¹  Mario Pezzotti¹  Sara Zenoni¹  Chiara Pastore²  Ilaria Filippetti² 

[1] Department of Biotechnology, University of Verona, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134, Verona, Italy;Department of Fruit Tree and Woody Plant Science, University of Bologna, Viale Fanin, 46, 40126, Bologna, Italy;

关键词: Vitis vinifera;    Defoliation;    Berry ripening;    Transcriptome;    Flavonoid;    Source-sink balance;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-13-30

 received in 2012-12-21, accepted in 2013-02-15,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe selective removal of grapevine leaves around berry clusters can improve the quality of ripening fruits by influencing parameters such as the berry sugar and anthocyanin content at harvest. The outcome depends strongly on the timing of defoliation, which influences the source–sink balance and the modified microclimate surrounding the berries. We removed the basal leaves from Vitis vinifera L. cv Sangiovese shoots at the pre-bloom and veraison stages, and investigated responses such as shoot growth, fruit morphology and composition compared to untreated controls. Moreover, we performed a genome-wide expression analysis to explore the impact of these defoliation treatments on berry transcriptome.ResultsWe found that pre-bloom defoliation improved berry quality traits such as sugar and anthocyanin content, whereas defoliation at veraison had a detrimental effect, e.g. less anthocyanin and higher incidence of sunburn damage. Genome-wide expression analysis during berry ripening revealed that defoliation at either stage resulted in major transcriptome reprogramming, which slightly delayed the onset of ripening. However, a closer investigation of individual gene expression profiles identified genes that were specifically modulated by defoliation at each stage, reflecting the uncoupling of metabolic processes such as flavonoid biosynthesis, cell wall and stress metabolism, from the general ripening program.ConclusionsThe specific transcriptional modifications we observed following defoliation at different time points allow the identification of the developmental or metabolic processes affected in berries thus deepening the knowledge of the mechanisms by which these agronomical practices impact the final berry ripening traits.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Pastore et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.