2022 09: Salty Wild Wine

Wild Grapes From Tunisia Combat Salt Stress

An often neglected consequece of climate change is the increase of soil salinity - rising sea levels, but also artificial irrigation make more and more soild go lost. A joint project funded by the German and the Tunisian Ministry of Science investigated this for grapevine. During a comparative study, we could show that a wild grapevine that had been found in the Atlas mountains, can grow even under severe salinity, although it takes up the salt and transfers it to the leaves. A very robust system of antioxidants helps to buffer against the dangerous oxygen radicals. By a comparison of salt-induced genes in the root, we can explain this by the accumulation of flavonoids and the reprogramming of sugar metabolism. This work appeared now in Frontiers of Plant Sciences.

Publication:

191. Daldoul S, Hanzouli F, Hamdi Z, Chenenaoui S, Wetzel T, Nick P, Mliki A, Gargouri M (2022) The root transcriptome dynamics reveals new valuable insights in the salt-resilience mechanism of Mediterranean wild grapevine (Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris). Front Plant Sci 13, 1077710 - pdf