Long-Term Impact of Chemical and Alternative Fungicides Applied to Grapevine cv Nebbiolo on Berry Transcriptome

Viticulture is one of the horticultural systems in which antifungal treatments can beextremely frequent, with substantial economic and environmental costs. New products, such asbiofungicides, resistance inducers and biostimulants, may represent alternative crop protectionstrategies respectful of the environmental sustainability and food safety. Here, the main purposewas to evaluate the systemic molecular modifications induced by biocontrol products as laminarin,resistance inducers (i.e., fosetyl-Al and potassium phosphonate), electrolyzed water and a standardchemical fungicide (i.e., metiram), on the transcriptomic profile of 'Nebbiolo' grape berries atharvest. In addition to a validation of the sequencing data through real-time polymerase chainreaction (PCR), for the first-time the expression of some candidate genes in different cell-types ofberry skin (i.e., epidermal and hypodermal layers) was evaluated using the laser microdissectionapproach. Results showed that several considered antifungal treatments do not strongly affect theberry transcriptome profile at the end of season. Although some treatments do not activate longlasting molecular defense priming features in berry, some compounds appear to be more active inlong-term responses. In addition, genes differentially expressed in the two-cell type populationsforming the berry skin were found, suggesting a different function for the two-cell type populations