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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1433161
This article is part of the Research Topic Current Advances in Botrytis cinerea: Biology, Pathogenesis and Interaction with Host Plants View all 4 articles

Botrytis cinerea causes different plant responses in grape (Vitis vinifera) berries during noble and grey rot: diverse metabolism versus simple defence

Provisionally accepted
Kálmán Zoltán Váczy Kálmán Zoltán Váczy 1*Margot Otto Margot Otto 1,2Adrienn Gomba-Tóth Adrienn Gomba-Tóth 1Adrienn Geiger Adrienn Geiger 1Richárd Golen Richárd Golen 1Julia Hegyi-Kalo Julia Hegyi-Kalo 1Thomas Cels Thomas Cels 1József Geml József Geml 1Zsolt Zsófi Zsolt Zsófi 1Ádám István Hegyi Ádám István Hegyi 1
  • 1 Eszterhazy Karoly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary
  • 2 Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation, School of Data Science and Computational Thinking, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The complexity of the interaction between the necrotrophic pathogen Botrytis cinerea and grape berries (Vitis vinifera spp.) can result in the formation of either the preferred noble rot (NR) or the loss-making grey rot (GR), depending on the prevailing climatic conditions. In this study, we focus on the functional gene set of V. vinifera by performing multidimensional scaling followed by differential expression and enrichment analyses. The aim of this study is to identify the differences in gene expression between grape berries in the phases of grey rot, noble rot, and developing rot (DR, in its early stages) phases. The grapevine transcriptome at the NR phase was found to exhibit significant differences from that at the DR and GR stages, which displayed strong similarities. Similarly, several plant defence-related pathways, including plant-pathogen interactions as hypersensitive plant responses were found to be enriched. The results of the analyses identified a potential plant stress response pathway (SGT1 activated hypersensitive response) that was found to be upregulated in the GR berry but downregulated in the NR berry. The study revealed a decrease in defence-related in V. vinifera genes during the NR stages, with a high degree of variability in functions, particularly in enriched pathways. This indicates that the plant is not actively defending itself against Botrytis cinerea, which is otherwise present on its surface with high biomass. This discrepancy underscores the notion that during the NR phase, the grapevine and the pathogenic fungi interact in a state of equilibrium. Conversely the initial stages of botrytis infection manifest as a virulent fungus-plant interaction, irrespective of whether the outcome is grey or noble rot.

    Keywords: Vitis vinifera, Botrytis cinerea, noble rot, grey rot, metatranscriptomics, Plantpathogen interaction

    Received: 15 May 2024; Accepted: 19 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Váczy, Otto, Gomba-Tóth, Geiger, Golen, Hegyi-Kalo, Cels, Geml, Zsófi and Hegyi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kálmán Zoltán Váczy, Eszterhazy Karoly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary

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