How sensor technologies combined with artificial intelligence increase the efficiency in grapevine breeding (research): current developments and future perspectives

Pruning vine-shoots are a viticulture waste that have been traditionally poorly exploited in relation to its chemical minority composition related to phenolic and volatile compounds. In this line, toasted vine-shoots supposes a proposal of enological tool to use to modulate the chemical and sensorial profile of wines. From a phenolic point of view, when vine-shoots are used during winemaking mainly influence to increase the flavanols and stilbenes content, mostly trans-resveratrol, as also an increasing in the sweet tannins and decreasing the green character and total anthocyanins, changing the violet for garnet colour.

Vine water status is a crucial determinant of vine growth, productivity, fruit composition and terroir or wine style; therefore, regulating water stress is of great importance. Since vine water status depends on both soil moisture and aerial environment and is very temporally dynamic, direct measurement of vine water potential is highly preferable. Current methods only provide limited data. To regulate vine water status it is critical to monitor vine water status to be able to: (1) measure vine water status to predict the effect of water stress on the overall vineyard performance and fruit quality and optimize harvest management and wine-making (2) properly regulate the water status to impose for a desired fruit quality or style (3) determine if water management has reached the desired stress level.

Satellite images of vineyards in France, Chile, and Brazil are used to study spectral differences between the vine varieties Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay, to verify if features of a given variety are conserved at vineyards in completely different terroirs.

Plants have been shown to redistribute water between root sections and soil layers along a gradient of decreasing water availability. One benefit of this hydraulic redistribution is that water can be transported from roots in wet soil to others in dry soil, delaying the onset of water stress and increasing root longevity in dry environments. Grapevines are thought to redistribute water laterally across the trunk from wet to dry portions of the root system. However, it is unknown whether the phloem contributes to such water redistribution.

New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs) have arisen with the objective of surmounting the constraints inherent in conventional breeding methodologies, thereby enhancing plant resilience against both biotic and abiotic stresses. To date the application of genome editing in grapevine is still limited by the necessity to overcome recalcitrance to produce embryogenic calli and to regenerate plants. In our studies, we developed a smart and versatile genetic transformation system carrying all the most promising features of different genome editing approaches. In specific, we joined the GRF-GIF expression to improve regeneration, the systemic movement of the editing transcripts through tRNA-like sequences (TLS) and the cisgenic-like approach to remove transgenes.