Berry color variation in grapevine as a source of diversity

Abstract

Even though it is one of the oldest perennial domesticated fruit crops in the world, grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) cultivation today is the result of both conventional breeding practices (i.e. hybridizations adopted during the last century) and vegetative propagation. Human-assisted asexual propagation has allowed the maintenance of desired traits but has largely impacted the frequency of spontaneous somatic mutations observed in the field. Consequently, many grapevine fruit attributes to date have been artificially selected, including: fruit yield, compactness, size and composition, the latter being greatly diversified in the pursuit of altering berry skin coloration. The present review provides an overview of various aspects related to grapevine diversity, with a special emphasis on grape berry skin color variation and will discuss the current knowledge of how grape skin color variation is affected by the synthesis of phenolic compounds, particularly anthocyanins and their underlying genetic factors. We hope this knowledge will be useful in supporting the importance of the berry color trait diversity in cultivated grapevines, which is used as basis for selection during breeding programs because of its application for vine growers, winemakers and consumers.

Mitotic gene conversion can be as important as meiotic conversion in driving genetic variability in plants and other species without early germline segregation

“…It also follows that inference of meiotic recombination rates from LD decay data would overestimate the impact of meiotic CO. Theoretical consequences of the generation of buds sports [83,84], and mitotic recombination more generally, in highly heterozygous asexuals is, we suggest, worthy of consideration.…”

Varietal richness of grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) from the Majes Valley, Peru: Identification, morphological characterization, ampelographic and genetic analysis

“…La diversidad de color influenciada por el genotipo puede ocurrir por efecto de la polinización en la característica de baya por alguna variedad polinizante (xenia y metaxenia). Sabir (2015) reporta las diferencias en las características de las bayas y semillas de la uva según la influencia de diferentes fuentes de polen, asimismo Sabir & Kucukbasmaci (2020) determinan la influencia de la polinización en un cultivar de interés comercial donde el color de la baya mejoró notablemente presentando un color de piel más oscuro e intenso con los pólenes del cultivar 'Kyoho', al realizar el estudio del color de baya en los viñedos de Majes habría que considerar este fenómeno dada la biodiversidad de color que presenta (Ferreira et al, 2018) lo cual puede aprovecharse en la producción de los viñedos, en la elaboración de vinos, piscos y programas de mejoramiento genético.…”

The grape MYB24 mediates the coordination of light-induced terpene and flavonol accumulation in response to berry anthocyanin sunscreen depletion

“…As largely described for many different cultivars and their somatic variants (51)(52)(53), depletion of anthocyanins usually results from deletions or mutational-induced inactivation of MYBA1/A2 transcription factors. Two of the most frequent alterations are in the insertion of the Gret1 retrotransposon in the MYBA1 promoter/5'UTR (5'-untranslated region) and single nucleotide substitutions/deletions in MYBA2 coding region (20,21).…”