Large gradient of susceptibility to esca disease revealed by long-term monitoring of 46 grapevine cultivars in a common garden vineyard

Abstract

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) is prone to many fungal diseases, including esca, a severe vascular disease threatening the wine sector and for which there is no cost-effective cure. Susceptibility to esca varies between cultivars in different infection conditions. It may therefore be possible to use the genetic diversity of grapevine cultivars to mitigate disease impact. However, the genetic component of esca susceptibility has rarely been investigated in the vineyard, and the specific mechanisms and varietal traits underlying esca susceptibility remain unknown. In this study, we monitored the incidence and severity of esca foliar symptoms and plant dieback (apoplexy and mortality) at plant level for seven years, on 46 cultivars planted in an experimental common garden, to separate the genetic component of esca susceptibility from the effects of environment and cropping practices. We observed a broad gradient of varietal susceptibility, with a mean incidence of 0 to 26% of vines expressing esca foliar symptoms depending on the variety. This gradient remained similar across years and, unlike the severity of foliar symptoms, the incidence of grapevine dieback was significantly correlated with that of foliar symptoms. We detected a significant but weak and very localised phylogenetic signal for the incidence of esca foliar symptoms in this panel of cultivars. We then explored the relationships between epidemiological metrics and ecophysiological and phenological traits phenotyped on the same plot. Esca disease incidence was negatively correlated with {delta}13C across cultivars, suggesting that varieties with higher water use efficiency are less prone to the expression of esca symptoms on leaves. Moreover, the least vigorous cultivars were among the least susceptible, although this relationship was not significant. By contrast, neither phenological stages nor nitrogen status were significantly predictive of cultivar susceptibility to the disease. Together, these results provide new insight into the potential of genetic resources for use in the sustainable management of grapevine trunk diseases and open up new perspectives for studying the pathological and physiological determinants of their incidence.