Vitis vinifera is economically one of the most important plant species. Worldwide, the U.S.A. is the fourth highest wine-producing country, where 87% of grapes harvested from Vitis vinifera are used for wine production. Top state producers include Texas, which encompasses eight American Viticultural Areas (AVAs). Comprehensive characterization of metabolites and biomarkers to uncover signatures specific to the producing regions has been accomplished by leading wine-producing countries. Central Texas endures harsh environmental conditions such as heatwaves and drought during the growing season in comparison to other regions, but the wine produced in this region is considered of singular high quality, showing a major increase in wine production in the last decade. Thus, it is imperative to identify wine metabolites and biomarkers specific to the Central Texas region. To our knowledge, there is no research precedent on the relationships between grapevine physiology-metabolism and berry-wine composition over the course of a growing season. Herein, the goal is to characterize for the first time, the metabolomic profile of 17 grapevines from 5 vineyards located in the Texas Hill Country and Mesa AVAs using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. The second aim is to analyze the produced multivariate data to obtain information about correlations, similarities, and differences between measured metabolites and grapevine varietals using XCMS and MetaboAnalyst. The following metabolomic workflow stages have been accomplished: 1) harvest of grapevine samples, 2) extraction of metabolites of 1/3 of samples using a liquid-liquid extraction method 3) experimental analysis using high-resolution mass-spectrometry for untargeted metabolomic profiling, and 4) identification of over 100 metabolites using chemometric analysis. Principle component analysis, partial least squares discriminant analysis, and heatmaps were utilized to identify the metabolomic profile, elucidating important patterns and relationships between varietals and metabolites.

Use of untargeted mass spectrometry based metabolomics to characterize grapevines from the Texas Hill Country and Mesa American Viticultural Areas

ACS Spring 2022

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