Berry texture and berry skin mechanical properties have high agronomic importance, related to quality and marketing requirements of wine, table and raisin grapes.

Microbial pathogens of plant have evolved to sense, interpret, and use light to direct their development. One aspect of this evolved relationship is photolyase-mediated repair of UV-induced damage to pathogen DNA. Application of germicidal UV (UV-C) at night circumvents the blue light-driven repair of pathogen DNA and allows non-phytotoxic doses of UV-C to suppress a variety of pathogenic microbes and even certain arthropod pests without damage to vines or fruit. Lamps arrays have been designed specifically for the canopy architecture of grapevines and have been deployed on both tractor-drawn and robotic carriages for partial to near-complete suppression of powdery mildew (Erysiphe necator), sour rot (fungal, bacterial, and arthropod complex), and downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola).

One of the major challenges for food security and sovereignty is to produce stress-tolerant plants without introducing foreign DNA, because the legislative process, that bans transgenics, challenges us to find new solutions for producing plants that can survive the drought. To achieve this goal, we need to identify genes that can be modified to improve stress tolerance in plants. In this work, we present an online tool for exploring the transcriptome of grapevines under water stress, which is one of the most important abiotic stresses affecting viticulture. The tool is based on a comprehensive collection of rna-seq data from 997 experiments, covering four different tissues (leaf, root, berry, and shoot), various levels of water stress, and diverse genetic backgrounds (cultivars and rootstocks) with different levels of tolerance to water stress.

Grapevine cultivation is threatened by the global warming, which combines high temperatures and reduced rainfall, impacting in wine quality and even plant survival. Breeding for varieties resilient to these challenges must address plant traits such as tolerance to supraoptimal temperatures and optimized water use efficiency while minimizing productivity and quality losses. Stomatal abundance (SA) determines the maximum leaf potential for transpiration and thus water loss and cooling. Since SA results from a developmental process during leaf emergence and growth, knowledge on the genetic control of this process would provide specific targets for modification.

Flavescence dorée (FD) is the most serious grapevine yellows disease in Europe. It is caused by phytoplasmas which are transmitted from grapevine to grapevine by the leafhopper Scaphoideus titanus.