WINE-SEARCHER - An end might be in sight to the long-running war between vineyard owners and their greatest enemy – phylloxera.
The genome of the phylloxera, an insect that caused plagues that devastated European vines in the 19th Century and has remained a potent threat ever since has been mapped by an international team involving researchers Miquel Barberà and David Martínez, from the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), center of the University of Valencia. The study was published in the journal BMC Biology.
The work opens the way for changing how viticulturists combat the pest and it could eventually lead to resistant rootstocks, eliminating the need for costly grafting.
"Growers currently have to graft roots to make their plants viable," Paul Nabity, an assistant professor of plant-insect ecology at UC Riverside, told the Growing Produce website. "A lot of money and effort could be saved with pest-resistant rootstocks."