Vintage and terroir are the strongest determinants of grapevine carposphere microbiome in the viticultural zone of Drama, Greece.

Abstract

The role of microbial terroir for enhancing the geographical origin of wines is well appreciated. Still, we lack a good understanding of the assembly mechanisms driving carposphere grapevine microbiota. We investigated the role of cultivar, vintage, terroir units (TUs), and vineyard geographic location on the composition of the carpospheric microbiota of three important cultivars in the viticultural zone of Drama, Greece using amplicon sequencing. Our strategy to define TUs based on georeferencing analysis allowed us to disentangle the effects of TU and vineyards geographic location, considered as a lumped factor in most studies to date. We hypothesized that (i) these factors contribute differently on the assembly of the carposphere microbiome and that (ii) fungal and bacterial communities follow different assembly mechanisms. Vintage and TU were the stronger determinants of the carposphere fungal and bacterial communities, although the latter showed weaker response. The stronger effect of TU over vineyard geography and cultivar reinforces the role of microbial terroir in viticulture. We identified fungi (Cladosporium, Aureobasidium, Alternaria) and bacteria (Pseudomonas, Methylobacterium, Sphingomonadaceae) as main members of the core microbiome. These microorganisms were associated with specific cultivars and TUs, a feature that could be pursued towards a new microbiome-modulated paradigm of viticulture.