Txakoli vineyard's microbiome: an omic perspective

Abstract

Metagenomics has revolutionized the agricultural microbial ecology. In particular, the adoption of suchtechnique in viticulture dates back to 10 years, where the microbial diversity and composition ofgrapevine and wine environment have been studied.The aim of this study is to characterize the bacterial diversity and composition of the soil and H. zurigrape variety all over the 3 Designation of Origin of txakoli in the Basque Country, using highthroughputsequencing. This research shows that soil and grape bacteriome differs significantly amongvineyards, but no DO-specific bacterial profile was identified, suggesting that the Txakoli viticulturalregion of the Basque Country represents a single bacterial terroir. Yeast and fungal studies that trackmicroorganisms in the field, cellar and in winemaking processes are needed to unravel whether the finalwine has a microbial terroir and at what step differentiation begins. Soil samples bacterial communitiesare driven by pH, while grape bacteriome is influenced by rootstock genotype. Interestingly both soil andgrape microbiota were shown to be affected by distance from the sea or the influence of sea breeze.Further analyses should be conducted to gain more knowledge on the influence of microclimatic factorson grape microbial ecology, so that wine growers can use this information to improve grape quality andwine characteristics.