Grape berry response to heatwaves in a climate change scenario: a physiological, transcriptional, and metabolic overview

Grapevines cv Sauvignon Blanc were subjected to different stress regimes by simulating the most common extreme weather events occurring within the current climate change scenario. During spring, just before bud break, the vines were either flooded or kept under normal conditions. Both vines were then split in two groups and put in differnt tunnels, either undergoing a simulated heatwave or not. Berry samples were collected from the four groups of plants (control, only flooded, only heatwave, flooded + heatwave) at different timepoints before, during and after the stress. Transcriptomic analyses were carried out on these samples along with some metabolomic assessments to characterize the response to stress in the different samples and the effect of the combined stresses. Overall design: The vines have been divided into two distinct tunnels. In the first, the control ones were posed: C (control, plants that have never undergone stress) and F (flooded, plants that have undergone to a submersion stress in pre-bud break, for more details consult Ruperti et al. 2019). In the second tunnel the plants stressed during the summer period were posed: DHW (drought+heat wave, or rather, plants that have undergone only the combined summer stresses) and DHW + F (drought+heat wave+spring flooding, so, plants that have suffered the combined summer stresses after being subjected to submersion stress in spring).