Use of beneficial bacteria and their secondary metabolites to control grapevine pathogen diseases

Grapevine is one of the most important economic crops yielding berries, wine products as well as derivates. However, due to the large array of pathogens inducing diseases on this plant, considerable amounts of pesticides—with possible negative impact on the environment and health—have been used and are currently used in viticulture. To avoid negative impacts of such products and to ensure product quality, a substantial fraction of pesticides needs to be replaced in the near future. One solution can be related to the use of beneficial bacteria inhabiting the rhizo- and/or the endosphere of plants. These biocontrol bacteria and their secondary metabolites can reduce directly or indirectly pathogen diseases by affecting pathogen performance by antibiosis, competition for niches and nutrients, interference with pathogen signaling or by stimulation of host plant defenses. Due to the large demand for biocontrol of grapevine diseases, such biopesticides, their modes of actions and putative consequences of their uses need to be described. Moreover, the current knowledge on new strains from the rhizo- and endosphere and their metabolites that can be used on grapevine plants to counteract pathogen attack needs to be discussed. This is in particular with regard to the control of root rot, grey mould, trunk diseases, powdery and downy mildews, pierce’s disease, grapevine yellows as well as crown gall. Future prospects on specific beneficial microbes and their secondary metabolites that can be used as elicitors of plant defenses and/or as biocontrol agents with potential use in a more sustainable viticulture will be further discussed

Molecular systematics of Biotype III Ti Plasmids of Agrobacterium tumefaciens

Molecular systematics of Biotype III Ti Plasmids of [i]Agrobacterium tumefaciens[/i

Genome Modification Approaches to Improve Performance, Quality, and Stress Tolerance of Important Mediterranean Fruit Species (Olea europaea L., Vitis vinifera L., and Quercus suber L.).

In the last decades the interest on traditional Mediterranean fruits highly increased, not only due to the constant demand of consumers for new crop alternatives, but also due to the identification in such species of molecules with important properties for human health (e.g. resveratrol from grapes and oleuropein from olives). Efforts to improve the production capacity and fruit quality in such fruit species, as well as the resistance to biotic and abiotic stress, was achieved by plant breeders using mainly classical breeding approaches (e.g. selection, hybridization and mutagenesis), nevertheless, breeding support by plant tissue culture techniques, marker assisted selection, as well as by genome modification, was also used. Here we will present the state of the art related with the production of transgenic plants in three Mediterranean fruit species with important impact on the economy, olive, grapevine and cork. The achievements, problems and future perspectives will be discussed.This work was financially supported by national funds through FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) under the Project UID/AGR/00115/2013, PTDC/BIA-BQM/28539/2017, by the Project OLEAVALOR (ALT20-03-0145-FEDER000014) funded by FEDER funds through the Program Alentejo 2020; Hélia Cardoso and Susana Serrazina were supported by FCT through post-doc fellowship SFRH/BPD/109849/2015 and SFRH/BPD/108653/2015, respectively; Andreia Figueiredo was also supported by the investigator FCT program IF/00819/2015