Impact of the Biocontrol Product, Esquive WP, on the Indigenous Grapevine Wood Microbiome after a 6-Year Application Period.

Grapevine trunk diseases (GTDs) are currently limiting grapevine productivity in many vineyards worldwide. As no chemical treatments are registered to control GTDs, biocontrol agents are being tested against these diseases. Esquive WP, based on the fungus -1237 strain, is the first biocontrol product registered in France to control GTDs. In this study, we determine whether, following grapevine pruning wound treatments with Esquive WP, changes occurred or not in the indigenous microbial communities that are colonizing grapevine wood. Over a 6-year period, Esquive WP was applied annually to pruning wounds on three grapevine cultivars located in three different regions. Wood samples were collected at 2 and 10 months after the Esquive WP treatments. Based on MiSeq high-throughput sequencing analyses, the results showed that specific microbial communities were linked to each 'region/cultivar' pairing. In certain cases, a significant modification of alpha diversity indexes and the relative abundance of some microbial taxa were observed between treated and non-treated grapevines 2 months after Esquive WP treatment. However, these modifications disappeared over time, i.e., 10 months post-treatment. This result clearly showed that Esquive WP pruning wood treatment did not induce significant changes in the grapevine wood's microbiome, even after 6 years of recurrent applications on the plants.