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Vines that remain healthy despite a "high disease load" could possibly owe their resistance to their microbiome function. This is what scientists found out in a recent study in New Zealand. They examined the microbiomes of vines affected by grapevine diseases and healthy vines. Vine diseases are a number of wood diseases caused by fungal spores, including Petri's disease, black foot disease and Esca. Esca is one of the most common vine diseases. It is caused by the fungi Phaeomoniella chlamydospora and Togninia minima. The research team pointed out that this is the first report on the link between the grapevine microbiome and disease resistance.
The microbiome is the term used to describe the totality of microorganisms, such as bacteria or viruses, that colonise humans or other living organisms. According to the researchers, the vines spared from vine diseases had a significantly different microbiome compared to the diseased vines. For example, the fungus Eutypa is considered to be the disease trigger, while healthy vines showed a consistently higher relative abundance of the bacteria taxa Pseudomonas and Hymenobacter as well as the fungi Aureobasidium and Rhodotorula.
(al / source: drinksbusiness)