Bridging in vitro and in planta models: metabolic insights into grapevine stress responses

Abstract

Rapid climate changes and increasing biotic pressures compromise grapevine production systems by threatening grape quality and production yields, thus increasing phytochemical dependence as a widely adopted mitigation strategy.

Reducing phytochemical dependence, while maintaining production and quality standards, requires an improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying stress adaptation and defence responses.

Perennial woody species, including grapevine, may present temporal, physiological and logistical constraints that limit their usage in the study of specific aspects of plant defence mechanisms. This also constrains the preliminary evaluation of potential biostimulants and elicitors. To improve experimental efficiency while preserving biological relevance, complementary systems that allow reliable knowledge transfer to intact plants should therefore be considered.

Plant cell suspension cultures offer a promising, simplified, tightly controlled, and highly reproducible platform with a homogenous cellular background suitable for dissecting specific response mechanistic aspects. However, their applicability depends on the extent to which in vitro responses reflect plant responses, an aspect never assessed. Thus, to address this, cell suspension cultures from two wine grape cultivars of Vitis vinifera with contrasting pathogen susceptibility, the susceptible cv. ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ and the tolerant cv. ‘Chambourcin’ were established. To bridge biological scales, detached leaves from the same cultivars were considered as a simplified plant model. Thus, both systems were elicited with jasmonic acid, and their metabolic profiles were analysed at 2 and 5 days after elicitation using Fourier-Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry (FT-ICR MS).

Acomparative metabolic analysis revealed a metabolic overlap between systems concerning oxidative stress defence, stress signalling, and secondary metabolism.

These findings support the use of grapevine cell suspension cultures as a reliable complementary platform in the study of stress response mechanisms. This approach provides a suitable framework for developing new sustainable disease management and resilience-oriented strategies in viticulture.