Grapevine bacterial communities display compartment-specific dynamics over space and time within the Central Valley...

Plant organs (compartments) host distinct microbiota which shift in response to variation in both development and climate. Grapevines are woody perennial crops that are clonally propagated and cultivated across vast geographic areas, and as such, their microbial communities may also reflect site-specific influences. These site-specific influences along with microbial differences across sites compose 'terroir', the environmental influence on wine produced in a given region. Commercial grapevines are typically composed of a genetically distinct root (rootstock) grafted to a shoot system (scion) which adds an additional layer of complexity via genome-to-genome interactions.

To understand spatial and temporal patterns of bacterial diversity in grafted grapevines, we used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to quantify soil and compartment microbiota (berries, leaves, and roots) for grafted grapevines in commercial vineyards across three counties in the Central Valley of California over two successive growing seasons. Community composition revealed compartment-specific dynamics. Roots assembled site-specific bacterial communities that reflected rootstock genotype and environment influences, whereas bacterial communities of leaves and berries displayed associations with time.

These results provide further evidence of a microbial terroir within the grapevine root systems but also reveal that the microbiota of above-ground compartments are only weakly associated with the local soil microbiome in the Central Valley of California.