X-ray imaging of 30 year old wine grape wood reveals cumulative impacts of rootstocks on scion secondary growth and harvest index

Abstract

O_LIAnnual rings from 30 year old vines in a California rootstock trial were measured to determine the effects of 15 different rootstocks on Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon scions. Viticultural traits measuring vegetative growth, yield, berry quality, and nutrient uptake were collected at the beginning and end of the lifetime of the vineyard. C_LIO_LIX-ray Computed Tomography (CT) was used to measure ring widths in 103 vines. Ring width was modeled as a function of ring number using a negative exponential model. Early and late wood ring widths, cambium width, and scion trunk radius were correlated with 27 traits. C_LIO_LIModeling of annual ring width shows that scions alter the width of the first rings but that rootstocks alter the decay thereafter, consistently shortening ring width throughout the lifetime of the vine. The ratio of yield to vegetative growth, juice pH, photosynthetic assimilation and transpiration rates, and stomatal conductance are correlated with scion trunk radius. C_LIO_LIRootstocks modulate secondary growth over years, altering hydraulic conductance, physiology, and agronomic traits. Rootstocks act in similar but distinct ways from climate to modulate ring width, which borrowing techniques from dendrochronology, can be used to monitor both genetic and environmental effects in woody perennial crop species. C_LI

Plant phenotyping relevance

X線CTによる年輪幅・形成層幅・幹半径の測定が研究の主要な表現型取得手段であり、樹体の二次成長を遺伝的・環境的影響のモニタリングに用いる方法として扱われている。

Code and data availability

The paper deposits its X-ray CT cross-section images with landmarks (the phenotyping inputs for ring-width measurement) on Dryad, and all data plus analysis code in a public GitHub repository/Jupyter notebook. Both are paper-specific, publicly available, and actionable.