Publications by authors named "Cunff L"

Quantifying healthy and degraded inner tissues in plants is of great interest in agronomy, for example, to assess plant health and quality and monitor physiological traits or diseases. However, detecting functional and degraded plant tissues in-vivo without harming the plant is extremely challenging. New solutions are needed in ligneous and perennial species, for which the sustainability of plantations is crucial.

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  • Grapevine breeding is facing challenges due to lengthy traditional methods (20-25 years) and the need to adapt to climate change, relying mainly on phenotypic data and few genetic markers.
  • The study assessed genomic prediction to enhance breeding efficiency by evaluating 30 traits in Rosé wine and Cognac grapevine programs, using advanced prediction methods.
  • Results showed significant variability in predictive abilities influenced by trait characteristics, allowing researchers to identify superior grapevine individuals for each program collaboratively with industry representatives.
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Chimerism is the phenomenon when several genotypes coexist in a single individual. Used to understand plant ontogenesis they also have been valorised through new cultivar breeding. Viticulture has been taking economic advantage out of chimeras when the variant induced an important modification of wine type such as berry skin colour.

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  • Phenomic prediction utilizes reflectance spectra to infer genetic information and has primarily focused on annual crops; this study pioneers its application in grapevine, analyzing data over two years across multiple traits.
  • The research demonstrated stable relationships between spectra and genomic data across different grapevine populations, with varying predictive abilities influenced by population type and tissue analysis.
  • The study found a significant positive correlation between genomic and phenomic predictive abilities, highlighting the potential for NIRS (Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy) as a promising tool in plant breeding.
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  • * Researchers utilized a diverse collection of 279 grapevine cultivars over several years, analyzing 127 different traits related to yield and quality, while employing advanced genetic mapping techniques.
  • * The findings revealed 489 reliable quantitative trait loci (QTLs), significantly enhancing the identification of genetic variations and providing insights for future breeding strategies, including the discovery of new candidate genes.
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Crop breeding involves two selection steps: choosing progenitors and selecting individuals within progenies. Genomic prediction, based on genome-wide marker estimation of genetic values, could facilitate these steps. However, its potential usefulness in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.

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  • Various methods, including multivariate penalized regression and interval mapping, were tested for predicting traits related to drought in grapevines, with penalized regression proving more effective for QTL detection.
  • The study revealed new QTLs linked to drought tolerance using a dense genetic mapping approach, demonstrating the potential of genomic prediction to enhance grapevine breeding efforts.
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Background: Muscadine (Muscadinia rotundifolia) is known as a resistance source to many pests and diseases in grapevine. The genetics of its resistance to two major grapevine pests, the phylloxera D. vitifoliae and the dagger nematode X.

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  • A fungal pathogen is causing significant damage to vineyards by entering vines through pruning wounds and leading to necrosis and reduced growth over time.
  • Researchers developed a rapid method to assess wood colonization in grapevine cuttings to understand how different grape cultivars and fungal strains affect this process.
  • A real-time PCR technique was created to measure fungal biomass, revealing a correlation between biomass levels and the severity of symptoms, indicating its potential for evaluating grapevine susceptibility to the pathogen and possibly others.
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Phenolic compounds represent a large family of plant secondary metabolites, essential for the quality of grape and wine and playing a major role in plant defense against biotic and abiotic stresses. Phenolic composition is genetically driven and greatly affected by environmental factors, including water stress. A major challenge for breeding of grapevine cultivars adapted to climate change and with high potential for wine-making is to dissect the complex plant metabolic response involved in adaptation mechanisms.

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Graphene physics and plasmonics are two fields which, once combined, promise a variety of exciting applications. One of those applications is the integration of active nano-optoelectronic devices in electronic systems, using the fact that plasmons in graphene are tunable, highly confined and weakly damped. A crucial challenge remains before achieving these active devices: finding a platform enabling a high propagation of Graphene Plasmons Polaritons (GPPs).

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  • - New grapevine varieties are being developed that require less pesticide and can adapt to climate change, but traditional breeding methods are slow and costly, making genome-wide association studies a more efficient alternative to identify useful traits.
  • - A new diversity panel of 279 grapevine cultivars was created from the largest grapevine collection in the world, ensuring a representative mix of different genetic backgrounds and traits related to wine and table grapes.
  • - The study utilized genetic markers to measure linkage disequilibrium, revealing reasonable power to detect associations within the panel, which allows for better understanding of the genetic diversity present in the grapevine germplasm.
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We demonstrate two-color nanoemitters that enable the selection of the dominant emitting wavelength by varying the polarization of excitation light. The nanoemitters were fabricated via surface plasmon-triggered two-photon polymerization. By using two polymerizable solutions with different quantum dots, emitters of different colors can be positioned selectively in different orientations in the close vicinity of the metal nanoparticles.

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Nowadays, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and genomic selection (GS) methods which use genome-wide marker data for phenotype prediction are of much potential interest in plant breeding. However, to our knowledge, no studies have been performed yet on the predictive ability of these methods for structured traits when using training populations with high levels of genetic diversity. Such an example of a highly heterozygous, perennial species is grapevine.

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Background: Interaction between TERMINAL FLOWER 1 (TFL1) and LEAFY (LFY) seem to determine the inflorescence architecture in Arabidopsis. In a parallel way, overexpression of VvTFL1A, a grapevine TFL1 homolog, causes delayed flowering and production of a ramose cluster in the reiterated reproductive meristem (RRM) somatic variant of cultivar Carignan. To analyze the possible contribution of this gene to cluster phenotypic variation in a diversity panel of cultivated grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.

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The applied exploitation of microalgae cultures has to date almost exclusively involved the use of wild type strains, deposited over decades in dedicated culture collections. Concomitantly, the concept of improving algae with selection programs for particular specific purposes is slowly emerging. Studying since a decade an economically and ecologically important haptophyte Tisochrysis lutea (Tiso), we took advantage of the availability of wild type (Tiso-Wt) and selected (Tiso-S2M2) strains to conduct a molecular variations study.

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We report on the efficient room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) quenching of ZnO in the presence of 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT) vapor and for concentration as low as 180 ppb. Compared to ZnO thin films, ZnO nanowires exhibit a strong (95%) and fast (41 s) quenching of the PL intensity in the presence of DNT vapor. Assuming that the PL quenching is due to a trapping of the ZnO excitons by adsorbed DNT molecules, Monte-Carlo calculations show that the nanometric dimensions as well as the better crystallographic quality (longer mean free path) of the ZnO nanowires result in an enhanced trapping process at the origin of the improved sensing properties of the nanowires.

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Proanthocyanidins (PA) play a major role in plant protection against biotic and abiotic stresses. Moreover these molecules are known to be beneficial for human health and are responsible for astringency of foods and beverages such as wine and thus have a great impact on the final quality of the product. Genes playing a role in the PA pathway are only partially known.

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Background: Grapevine (Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera) is one of the most important and ancient horticultural plants in the world. Domesticated about 8-10,000 years ago in the Eurasian region, grapevine evolved from its wild relative (V.

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Modern sugarcane cultivars (Saccharum spp., 2n = 100-130) are high polyploid, aneuploid and of interspecific origin. A major gene (Bru1) conferring resistance to brown rust, caused by the fungus Puccinia melanocephala, has been identified in cultivar R570.

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Through multiple vegetative propagation cycles, clones accumulate mutations in somatic cells that are at the origin of clonal phenotypic diversity in grape. Clonal diversity provided clones such as Cabernet-Sauvignon N°470, Chardonnay N° 548 and Pinot noir N° 777 which all produce wines of superior quality. The economic impact of clonal selection is therefore very high: since approx.

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Background: Proanthocyanidins (PAs), or condensed tannins, are flavonoid polymers, widespread throughout the plant kingdom, which provide protection against herbivores while conferring organoleptic and nutritive values to plant-derived foods, such as wine. However, the genetic basis of qualitative and quantitative PA composition variation is still poorly understood. To elucidate the genetic architecture of the complex grape PA composition, we first carried out quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis on a 191-individual pseudo-F1 progeny.

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Premise Of The Study: In this study, we developed a nuclear DNA extraction protocol for Next Generation Sequencers (NGS).

Methods And Results: We applied this extraction method to grapevines and coffee trees, which are known to contain many secondary metabolites. The nuclear DNA obtained was sequenced by the 454/GS-FLX method.

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Background: High-throughput re-sequencing, new genotyping technologies and the availability of reference genomes allow the extensive characterization of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion/deletion events (indels) in many plant species. The rapidly increasing amount of re-sequencing and genotyping data generated by large-scale genetic diversity projects requires the development of integrated bioinformatics tools able to efficiently manage, analyze, and combine these genetic data with genome structure and external data.

Results: In this context, we developed SNiPlay, a flexible, user-friendly and integrative web-based tool dedicated to polymorphism discovery and analysis.

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Background: Stenospermocarpy is a mechanism through which certain genotypes of Vitis vinifera L. such as Sultanina produce berries with seeds reduced in size. Stenospermocarpy has not yet been characterized at the molecular level.

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