Before the grapevine starts to “wake up”, experts on grafting came to visit our greenhouse. They grafted our uninfected grapevines with buds of virus-infected grapevine by using the “chip budding” grafting method. The success of viral transfer will be determined in two months.

After grafting, pots were reorganized in groups containing one plant from every treatment. The pots will stay in this organization until the end of the experiment.

We ran the RT-PCR method for the identification of viral isolates in selected grapevine plants that will be used as a viral source for our experiment. Few individuals were tested from the vineyard and we selected plants infected with only one virus (GLRaV-3) and plants that have mixed infections with five different viruses (GFkV, GVA, GLRaV-3, GLRaV-2, and GPGV). The tested grapevines will be used in the next experimental faze – infection of selected treatment with appropriate viral inoculum.

As a part of the lecture series “Friday lectures at 15h” organized by the Institute for Adriatic crops, dr. sc. Tomislav Radić held a presentation of the project “Arbuscular mycorrhiza potential to modify grapevine defense against viruses” funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. Dr. Radić clarified to his audience the term “arbuscular mycorrhiza”, familiarized them with the setup of the experiment, pointed out the importance of this topic on a global and regional scale, and gave answers to many interesting questions that emerged through discussion.

In grapevine individuals, inoculated with mychorrizal fungi Rhizophagus irregularis, the root colonization successfulness was determined. Microscopic quantification was carried out with a light microscope. We can report, with pleasure, that almost every specimen was colonized with the rate of colonization exceeding 90 %. This set of plants is ready for the next phase of the experiment.

In the period from 19th to 22nd of September, dr. Raffaella Maria Balestrini held a methodological workshop on gene expression determination with qPCR. Using real samples, we went through all the steps necessary for successful relative quantification of gene expression. Introduction to methodology of this kind of analysis, will be of great importance for further progress of the project.