Moving towards grapevine genotypes better adapted to abiotic constraints

Vitis spp., both in their cultivated and wild forms, have been growing in a large diversity of environments for thousands of years. As a result, they have developed many adaptive mechanisms controlled by a range of regulatory processes. The cultivated species, Vitis vinifera, is quite well adapted to semi-arid conditions and its cultivation can be used to pro-duce crops on marginal lands. However, this is threatened by climate change, which is associated with increased tempera -ture and CO2 atmospheric content, changes in water availa-bility and an increased likelihood of extreme events, such as heat waves and early spring frosts. Indirect effects of climate change on solar radiation and soil minerals are also expect-ed. Consequently, cultivated grapevines will presumably face more abiotic constraints occurring concomitantly or succes-sively over one or more growing cycles. In addition to climate change, worldwide viticulture must reduce the use of pesti-cides. Adapting to climate change and reducing pesticide use are challenging, and increase the need to create new grape-vine varieties that are more resistant to diseases and better adapted to abiotic constraints. For this purpose, the adaptive mechanisms of wild and cultivated Vitis spp. must be exploit-ed. While major advances have already been made in exploit-ing wild alleles for disease resistance, the polygenic nature of adaptation to abiotic factors has slowed down research pro-gress. To tackle this limitation, ambitious integrative strate-gies need to be undertaken from collection and characteriza-tion of genetic resources, investigations on genetic architec-ture and identification of underlying genes (including those involved in epigenetic regulation), to the implementation of new breeding technologies and the development of genomic selection. An update on the state-of-the-art regarding these aspects is presented.