Serge Delrot

University of Bordeaux · Institute of Vine and Wine Science

Anthocyanin composition is responsible for the red color of grape berries and wines, and contributes to their organoleptic quality. However, anthocyanin biosynthesis is under genetic, developmental and environmental regulation, making its targeted fine-tuning challenging. We constructed a mechanistic model to simulate the dynamics of anthocyanin co...

Anthocyanin composition is responsible for the red color of grape berries and wines, and contributes to their organoleptic quality. However, anthocyanin biosynthesis is under genetic, developmental and environmental regulation, making its targeted fine-tuning challenging. We constructed a mechanistic model to simulate the dynamics of anthocyanin co...

Anthocyanin-less (white) instead of black/red (coloured) fruits develop in grapevine cultivars without functional VviMYBA1 and VviMYBA2 genes, which conditions the colour of wines that can be produced. To evaluate whether this genetic variation has additional consequences on fruit ripening and composition, we performed microenvironment, transcripto...

We elucidate grapevine evolution and domestication histories with 3525 cultivated and wild accessions worldwide. In the Pleistocene, harsh climate drove the separation of wild grape ecotypes caused by continuous habitat fragmentation. Then, domestication occurred concurrently about 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus to yield table an...

In ripening grape (Vitis sp.) berries, the combination of rapid sugar import, apoplastic phloem unloading, and water discharge via the xylem creates a potential risk for apoplastic sugar to be lost from the berries. We investigated the likelihood of such sugar loss and a possible sugar retrieval mechanism in the pedicels of different Vitis genotype...

To optimize vineyard management practices to adapt viticulture to climate change, knowledge of the regulation mechanism of metabolite accumulation under carbon source limitation and abscisic acid (ABA) application in grapes should be deepened. Here, carbon source limitations were imposed by reducing leaf area from 12 to 2 leaves per vine (at pea si...

Twelve polyphenols from three distinct families (dihydroflavonols, flavan-3-ols, and flavanones) were studied as potential substrates of anthocyanidin synthase from Vitis vinifera (VvANS). Only flavan-3-ols of (2R,3S) configuration having either a catechol or gallol group on ring B are accepted as substrates. Only dihydroflavonols of (2R,3R) config...

Auxin is a key phytohormone that modulates fruit formation in many fleshy fruits through the regulation of cell division and expansion. Auxin content rapidly increases after pollination and the manipulation in its levels may lead to the parthenocarpic development. ln Vitis vinifera L., little is known about the early fruit development that encompas...

Background and Aims Climate change is modifying grape berry composition and affecting wine quality and typicity. We evaluated the effects of leaf-to-fruit ratio and exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) application on the accumulation of primary and secondary metabolites in berries, in order to optimise climate change adaptation strategies. Methods and Re...

Perennial woody plants undergo a period of dormancy from the beginning of autumn until the end of spring. Whereas the molecular and physiological events that characterize dormancy release of buds have been described in detail, those occurring in woody tissues underneath the buds are mostly unknown. To bridge this gap, the mRNA populations of cane s...

Main conclusion White-fleshed grape cv. ‘Gamay’ and its two teinturier variants presented distinct spatial–temporal accumulation of anthocyanins, with uncoupled accumulation of sugars and anthocyanins in ‘Gamay Fréaux’. AbstractIn most red grape cultivars, anthocyanins accumulate exclusively in the berry skin, while ‘teinturier’ cultivars also accu...

The necessity to adapt to climate change is even stronger for grapevine than for other crops, because grape berry composition—a key determinant of fruit and wine quality, typicity and market value— highly depends on “terroir” (complete natural environment), on vintage (annual climate variability), and on their interactions. In the same time, there...

Potassium (K+) nutrition is of relevant interest for winegrowers because it influences grapevine growth, berry composition, as well as must and wine quality. Indeed, wine quality strongly depends on berry composition at harvest. However, K+ content of grape berries increased steadily over the last decades, in part due to climate change. Currently,...

Climate change scenarios predict an increase in mean air temperatures and in the frequency, intensity, and length of extreme temperature events in many wine‐growing regions worldwide. Because elevated temperature has detrimental effects on berry growth and composition, it threatens the economic and environmental sustainability of wine production. U...

Background: Grapevine is a crop of major economic importance, yet little is known about the regulation of shoot development in grapevine or other perennial fruits crops. Here we combine genetic and genomic tools to identify candidate genes regulating shoot development in Vitis spp. Results: An F2 population from an interspecific cross between V....

Background: Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the "terroir" of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results: To better understand the effect of "place" on transcript abundance during the late stages of berry ripening, Ca...

Background Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results To better understand the effect of “place” on berry ripening, transcript abundances in Cabernet Sauvignon berries gr...

Background Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results To better understand the effect of “place” on berry ripening, transcript abundances in Cabernet Sauvignon berries gr...

Background Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results To better understand the effect of “place” on berry ripening, transcript abundances in Cabernet Sauvignon berries gr...

Anthocyanins are flavonoids responsible for the color of berries in skin-pigmented grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.). Due to the widely adopted vegetative propagation of this species, somatic mutations occurring in meristematic cell layers can be fixed and passed into the rest of the plant when cloned. In this study we focused on the transcriptomic and...

Climate change scenarios predict an increase in mean air temperatures and in the frequency, intensity, and length of extreme temperature events in many wine-growing regions worldwide. Because elevated temperature has detrimental effects on the berry growth and composition, it threatens the economic and environmental sustainability of wine productio...

Background Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results To better understand the effect of “place” on berry ripening, transcript abundances in Cabernet Sauvignon berries gr...

Background Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results To better understand the effect of “place” on transcript abundance during the late stages of berry ripening, Cabern...

As the climate changes, genetic adaptation of crops to abiotic stresses is an increasingly important issue, especially for a perennial crops of high economic value such as grapevine. Given the numerous environments where this plant can be found, and the huge intra- and interspecific diversity, we can assume that grapevine genomes contain many aile...

Background: Grape berry ripening is influenced by climate, the main component of the “terroir” of a place. Light and temperature are major factors in the vineyard that affect berry development and fruit metabolite composition. Results: To better understand the effect of “place” on berry ripening, transcript abundances in Cabernet Sauvignon berries...

Context and purpose of the study: Like in other wine producing regions around the world, Bordeaux vineyards already experience the effects of climate change. Recent trends as well as model outputs for the future strongly support an increase of average and extreme temperatures. For the maturation period, this increase will by far exceed mean atmosph...

Anthocyanidin synthase from Vitis vinifera (VvANS) catalyzes the in vitro transformation of the natural isomer of leucocyanidin, 2R,3S,4S-cis-leucocyanidin, into 2R,4S-flavan-3,3,4-triol ([M+H]+, m/z 323) and quercetin. The C3-hydroxylation product 2R,4S-flavan-3,3,4-triol is first produced, and its non-enzymatic dehydration product undergoes a sec...

Grapevines are perennial plants that can display remarkable longevity. It is often thought that some of their characteristics evolve in a positive way as they grow older, such as having a higher tolerance to water deficit and an improved balance between vegetative and reproductive growth. However, only a few studies have been conducted so far on th...

The growth of a fleshy fruit is greatly affected by the carbon and water status of the parent plant. Here, we developed an integrated functional-structural grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) model that can simultaneously simulate berry growth and whole-plant carbon and water status based on hourly environmental conditions. The model was tested on fruiti...

Grafting has been utilized for at least the past 7000 years. However, historically grafting has been developed by growers without particular interest beyond the agronomical and ornamental effects, thus knowledge about grafting has remained largely empirical. Much of the commercial production of fruit, and increasingly vegetables, relies upon grafti...

The growth of fleshy fruits is still poorly understood resulting from the complex integration of water and solute fluxes, cell structural properties, and the regulation of whole plant source-sink relationships. To unravel the contribution of these processes on berry growth, a biophysical grape (Vitis vinifera L.) berry growth module was developed a...

Main conclusion: The elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of starch synthesis and mobilization in perennial woody tissues is of the utmost scientific and agricultural importance. Starch is the main carbohydrate reserve in plants and is fundamental in human nutrition and several industrial processes. In leaves, starch accumulated during the day...

The original article was corrected.

Adaptation to abiotic stresses is a complex and challenging biological issue for a genetician, especially for perennial plants such as grapevine. According to Copper and Hammer (1996), adaptation is both a “status” and a “process”. The “status” characterizes a genotype with a specific combination of alleles which allows the plant to survive and per...

Anthocyanin biosynthesis is regulated by environmental factors (such as light, temperature, and water availability) and nutrient status (such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphate nutrition). Previous reports show that low nitrogen availability strongly enhances anthocyanin accumulation in non carbon-limited plant organs or cell suspensions. It has be...

Anthocyanin biosynthesis is regulated by environmental factors (such as light, temperature, and water availability) and nutrient status (such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphate nutrition). Previous reports show that low nitrogen availability strongly enhances anthocyanin accumulation in non carbon-limited plant organs or cell suspensions. It has be...

NGS 2018 | April 9 – 11, 2018 | Barcelona, Spain | HOME NGS 2018

Background and Aims Predicting both plant water status and leaf gas exchange under various environmental conditions is essential for anticipating the effects of climate change on plant growth and productivity. This study developed a functional–structural grapevine model which combines a mechanistic understanding of stomatal function and photosynth...

How rootstocks contribute to the control of scion transpiration under drought is poorly understood. We investigated the role of root characteristics, hydraulic conductance and chemical signals (abscisic acid, ABA) in the response of stomatal conductance (gs) and transpiration (E) to drought in Cabernet Sauvignon (Vitis vinifera) grafted onto drough...

The intra-varietal genetic diversity of grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) may be exploited to maintain grape quality under future warm conditions, which may alter grape berry development and composition. The present study assesses the effects of elevated temperature on the development of berry, grape composition and anthocyanins:sugars ratio of thirtee...

Since the second half of the XIXth century, grapevine has been grown grafted worldwide to cope with Phylloxera. Consequently, the cultivated grapevine is a chimeric plant made from two genotypes which interact together. The result of this interaction must ensure a balanced functioning dedicated to fruit production in terms of quantity and quality....

Main conclusion: Severe leaf removal decreases storage starch and sucrose in grapevine cv. Cabernet Sauvignon fruiting cuttings and modulates the activity of key enzymes and the expression of sugar transporter genes. Leaf removal is an agricultural practice that has been shown to modify vineyard efficiency and grape and wine composition. In this s...

In many fruit species, including grapevine, grafting is used to improve scion productivity and quality and to adapt the plant to environmental conditions. However, the mechanisms underlying the rootstock control of scion development are still poorly understood. The ability of rootstocks to regulate nitrogen uptake and assimilation may contribute to...

Monoterpenes confer typical floral notes to “Muscat” grapevine varieties and, to a lesser extent, to other aromatic non-Muscat varieties. Previous studies have led to the identification and functional characterization of some enzymes and genes in this pathway. However, the underlying genetic map is still far from being complete. For example, the sp...

p class="Abstract" style="text-align: justify;">Designing genotypes with acceptable performance under warmer or drier environments is essential for sustainable crop production in view of climate change. However, this objective is not trivial for grapevine since traits targeted for genetic improvement are complex and result from many interactions an...

Designing genotypes with acceptable performance under warmer or drier environments is essential for sustainable crop production in view of climate change. However, this objective is not trivial for grapevine since traits targeted for genetic improvement are complex and result from many interactions and trade-off between various physiological and mo...

Anthocyanins are responsible for grape color, an important quality factor for market acceptance. The relative proportion of cyanidin-based (cyanidin- and peonidin-derivatives) and delphinidin-based (delphinidin-, malvidin- and petunidinderivatives) anthocyanins largely determines the color variation among red/purple/blue colored grape varieties. An...

Reproductive development of grapevine and berry composition are both strongly influenced by temperature. To date, the molecular mechanisms involved in grapevine berries response to high temperatures are poorly understood. Unlike recent data that addressed the effects on berry development of elevated temperatures applied at the whole plant level, th...