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Selmi, I., Elbeaino, T., Arezki, L., El Air, M., Digiaro, M., and Mahfoudhi, N. 2021. Prevalence and genetic diversity of grapevine virus D in Tunisia. Tunisian Journal of Plant Protection 16 (2): 19-27.

SUMMARY: The grapevine industry is of high economic importance in several countries worldwide. Its growing market demand led to an acceleration of the entire production processes, implying increasing use of water resources at the expense of environmental water balance and the hydrological cycle. Furthermore, in recent decades climate change and the consequent expansion of drought have further compromised water availability, making current agricultural systems even more fragile from ecological and economical perspectives. Consequently, farmers' income and welfare are increasingly unpredictable and unstable. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the resilience of vineyards, and of agro‐ecosystems in general, by developing sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practices by more rational biological and natural resources use. The PRIMA project PROSIT addresses these challenges by characterizing and harnessing grapevine‐associated microbiota to propose innovative and sustainable agronomic practices. PROSIT aims to determine the efficacy of natural microbiomes transferred from grapevines adapted to arid climate to commonly cultivated grapevine cultivars. In doing so it will test those natural microbiome effects on drought tolerance. This multidisciplinary project will utilize in vitro culture techniques, bioimaging, microbiological tests, metabolomics, metabarcoding and epigenetic analyses. These will be combined to shed light on molecular mechanisms triggered in plants by microbial associations upon water stress. To this end it is hoped that the project will serve as a blueprint not only for studies uncovering the microbiome role in drought stress in a wide range of species, but also for analyzing its effect on a wide range of stresses commonly encountered in modern agricultural systems. Significance Statement: This Perspective Review manuscript focuses on innovative and sustainable solutions to drought stress in viticulture, representing the core research of the "Plant Microbiome in Sustainable Viticulture (PROSIT)" project funded by the PRIMA Foundation with the support of the Horizon 2020 Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey was conducted of central and western Algerian grape cultivars and a germplasm collection to detect the presence of Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 1 (GLRaV-1), using DAS-ELISA. The virus was found in 26 of 484 sample (5.4%). No infection was found in the germplasm collection. Analysis of the sequence of a coat protein gene region revealed that of the 17 recognised phylogenetic groups, the Algerian isolates belong to Groups I, II and XVI. This is the first study of genetic diversity of GLRaV-1 in Algeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]