Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Scientia Horticulturae journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scihorti Phenotyping of the “G series” Vitis hybrids: First screening of the mineral composition Davide Bianchi a, *, Daniele Grossi a , Giovambattista Simone Di Lorenzo a , Yang Zi Ying a , Laura Rustioni b , Lucio Brancadoro a a DISAA, Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie e Ambientali, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 2 - 20133, Milano, Italy b Laboratorio di Coltivazioni Arboree, DISTEBA (Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche e Ambientali), Università del Salento, via Provinciale Lecce Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Rootstock selection mineral nutrition plasticity grapevine viticulture breeding ABSTRACT Grapevine rootstocks affect the nutritional status of plants and thus the production and the quality of grape. In this study, a screening of mineral level in vine leaves is performed to a series of 35 Vitis hybrids for rootstock selection, in two different growing conditions at two sampling times. Mineral levels were determined by ele- mental analyzer (N) and ICP-MS (P; K; Mg; Ca; Na; Fe; Cu; Fe) in leave samples. Generally, the effect of growing conditions was predominant, whereas genotype effect and their interaction were significant for N, K, Ca, Mg, Na, Mn and Cu. A cluster analysis was used to identify the affinity of each genotypes to K, Mg and Ca. Furthermore, response of genotypes to the different environments was assessed by a plasticity index. An elastic behavior was shown by 14 genotypes. Within this group, genotypes G.05, G.21, G.71, G.76 and G.77 reported high potassium level, beside the already demonstrated tolerance to water stress. 1. INTRODUCTION Mineral deficiencies result in physiological dysfunctions character- ized by specific symptoms (Caramanico et al., 2017; Rustioni et al., 2018). Besides the vegetative growth, nutritional disequilibrium affects the production and the quality of grape. For example, nitrogen may affect the Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen (YAN) in the must, involving in microbial instability during fermentation (Bell and Henschke, 2005) and potassium excess may increase the must pH, due to the salification of tartaric acid (Brancadoro et al., 1994; Kodur, 2011). Nutrients are mainly uptaken by the soil, translocated through different plant tissues, and stocked in the wood or moved to leaves and berries. Thus, besides the environmental conditions (including mineral content in the soil, water availability, and, in general, climatic and edaphic conditions), also agronomical practices, affecting plant physiology, influence the nutritional status of vines. In this framework, one of the major effect could be ascribed to the cultivated genotypes of varieties and rootstocks (Fisarakis et al., 2004; Ibacache and Sierra, 2009; Tomasi et al., 2015). The effect of rootstocks on the nutritional status can be explained by different attitude of each genotype in terms of nutrient uptake, trans- location in the shoot and assimilation (Ozdemir et al., 2011). Both root density and distribution are affected by rootstocks (Swanepoel and Southey, 1989) and the differences in the root morphology between genotypes may produce differential nutrient uptakes (Williams and Smith, 1991). Mineral translocation can also be affected by rootstock genotype, for example, by the synthesis of different levels of cytokinins (Skene and Antcliff, 1972). Nutritional status of genotypes can be largely affected by the en- vironmental conditions, and, thus, the stability of the performances of a rootstock acquire a major importance. Genotypes called ‘plastic’, re- spond to each environment strongly modifying their phenotype, while genotypes called ‘elastic’ maintain similar characteristics in different environments. Recently, different studies were focused on this property (Bianchi et al., 2018; Dal Santo et al., 2018; Pinto et al., 2016; Rustioni et al., 2019). Rootstock selection should consider the plasticity of genotypes besides their average performance, in order to find elastic genotypes to ensure a good nutritional status under a wide range of environments and plastic genotypes able to adapt to critical conditions. Among commercial rootstocks, SO4 (V. berlandieri × V. riparia) and 44- 53 M (V. riparia × V. cordifolia × V. rupestris) show high levels of po- tassium (Brancadoro et al., 1994; Wooldridge et al., 2010). During last decades, a new set of rootstock genotypes was obtained by Università degli Studi di Milano, through a breeding program. Four of them have been recently registered and commercialized with the name of “M” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2019.109155 Received 3 April 2019; Received in revised form 3 December 2019; Accepted 23 December 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: davide.bianchi3@unimi.it (D. Bianchi). Scientia Horticulturae 264 (2020) 109155 0304-4238/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T