ADAPT

Current projections of future wine-growing regions with climate change suggest dramatic shifts in viticultural areas with expected effects on grape and wine quality. It has been reported that even minor shifts in seasonal temperature can lead to the production of wine whose quality may range from poor to excellent. The plant adaptation to climate change is on the one hand due to the soil and climate combination, on the other hand to its specific phenotypic plasticity, attributable to biological capability, implying a reorganization of the whole genome often associated with changes at the genomic, epigenetic,transcriptional and network levels. Previous investigations upon grape phenotypic plasticity showed a high level of differentiation between vineyards, depending on the area of provenance. However, researchers did not reach the same conclusions and results are still controversial. This is largely due to the fact that most studies have focused on single or few components affecting the adaptation. By contrast, foremost scientists suggest that progress in this field are strongly dependent on multidisciplinary approaches and on the application of emerging techniques. The main thrust of ADAPT is to assess the impact of environmental conditions on grape and wine quality through the characterization of grapevine phenotypic plasticity. Therefore, the following objectives are set to: 1) understand how agro-climatic conditions can influence metabolite profiles and microbial populations of grapes and wines, 2) identify genes and regulative factors involved in the grapevine environment adaptation and 3) elucidate the correlations between grape quality and water stress through an index analysis of soil-plant-atmosphere-microbiota interaction. To this end, ADAPT will harness a multidisciplinary approach focusing on genetic, epigenetic, metabolic and microbiological responses of an international (Cabernet Sauvignon) or an indigenous (Aglianico) grape variety, both grown along a latitudinal climatic gradient in Southern Italy. The project is organized into four Work Packages (WP) which are interconnected. WP1 will focus on the characterization of the soil-grapevine-atmosphere interaction and identification of the correlations between quality and water stress under different climate conditions. The effect of different pedo-climatic conditions on plant responses will be modeled using data produced in WP2, WP3 and WP4. WP2 will investigate the primary and specialized metabolites produced in different areas of interest and will produce data for WP1 and WP3. WP3 will employ -omics approaches to evaluate the differences of transcriptional, DNA methylation and small RNA profiles for specific environmental conditions. The data generated will be intersected with those from WP2 for a multi-omics data integration and used in the model developed in the WP1. WP4 will investigate how agro-climatic conditions can influence the microbial populations primarily on grape-berries and subsequently on musts and wine. These data will be integrated with those obtained in all WPs.

Actions proposed in this project are addressed to important needs linked to both food and plant science: the awareness of plant adaptation strategies to climatic changes and the downstream fundamental information provided for the wine industry. In this field, only a few studies evaluated the phenotypic plasticity of indigenous grape variety over international ones. From this point of view ADAPT ambition is to provide solutions to the decline of grape diversity richness worldwide. In fact, international varieties tend to take over indigenous ones across the globe, with the critical outcome of a grapevine crop that is more uniform and thus less resilient to environmental changes. The increased knowledge on complex plant-environmental interactions in grapevine will help to address some unresolved and tantalizing questions such as: do indigenous and international grape varieties exploit distinctive molecular mechanisms to cope with diverse climate regimes? Are microbial communities present on the grape skin affected by grapevine-specific plasticity and adaptation? How all previous factors impact musts and wines chemical compositions?

A point of strength of ADAPT is the presence of different experts, including molecular biologists, plant physiologists, microbiologists, soil scientists, hydro-pedologists, modellers, oenologists, chemists and bioinformaticians. They will closely cooperate to achieve the objectives set in the project by combining a multidisciplinary approach and cutting-edge methodologies.