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Thesis

English

ID: <

10670/1.aocsi7

>

Where these data come from
The effect of pathogens on the water and carbon economy of grapevines : implications for the grapevine dieback crisis

Abstract

Perennial plant dieback is an increasing and complex phenomenon. Perennial plants experience many interacting stressing events leading to final plant mortality. These interactions, and how they may change regarding climatic conditions and plant physiological status, are key in understanding the dieback process. Although dieback events are increasing worldwide, the knowledge on the dieback mechanisms are scarce, given the many technical challenges in studying complex interactions. In this thesis, we studied the interaction between two stresses frequently experienced by grapevines, one of the most important perennial crops: drought and esca (a vascular disease). Esca is a disease in which there are many competing hypotheses regarding its pathogenesis. One of the main hypothesis is that leaf symptoms and plant death are caused by hydraulic failure in xylem vessels. For this reason, drought is thought to contribute synergistically with esca to grapevine dieback. In this context, this thesis has primarily explored the hydraulic failure hypothesis during esca pathogenesis. We found that during leaf symptom expression both leaves and stems suffer from hydraulic failure causing (on average) 69% loss of hydraulic conductance in midribs, 55% in petioles, and 30% in stems. Differing from classical air embolism during drought, we observed that hydraulic failure during esca was caused by the presence of plant-derived vascular occlusions (i.e. tyloses and gels) produced at a distance from the pathogen niche in the trunk. After this discovering, we explored the interaction between esca and drought, subjecting naturally infected plants to drought. We found that drought totally inhibits esca leaf symptoms, as none of the plants under water deficit (at ΨPD ≈ -1MPa for three months) expressed leaf symptoms in two consecutive seasons. At the same time, in order to understand the interaction between esca and drought, we recorded the whole-plant water relations and carbon economy of grapevine under both stresses. We highlight the distinct physiology behind these two stresses, indicating that esca and drought present different underlying mechanisms, and induce different plant responses and physiological consequences. Esca (and subsequent stomatal conductance decline) does not result from decreases in water potential, and generates different gas exchange and non-structural carbohydrate seasonal dynamics compared to drought. Finally, we observed that esca affected the recorded plant physiology only seasonally, and not over the long-term. This thesis highlights the importance in finding the physiological thresholds triggering the different interactions during plant dieback. Together, the results open new scientific and agronomical perspectives on plant-pathogen-environment interactions and vineyard sustainability.

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