Agriculture Wild vines are a reservoir for a grapevine disease
Overgrown vines pose a threat to viticulture in Switzerland. As researchers have shown in a new study, they serve as a reservoir for the grapevine disease known as golden yellowing.
04.03.2025, 12:08
SDA
Infected feral vines in the forest provide insects with a source for transmitting the pathogen to cultivated vines, as the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) announced on Tuesday.
This means that simply combating the golden yellowing in the vineyards is insufficient. According to the WSL, measures in the forest, such as the removal of overgrown vines, are also needed to effectively contain the spread.
The WSL researchers came to this conclusion together with researchers from Agroscope, the federal government's competence center for agricultural research. In the laboratory, they tested leaves and insects that they had collected from 13 different test areas with overgrown vines.
Genetically identical pathogen
They found genetically identical pathogens on feral vines. Another research finding was that, in addition to the American grapevine cicada, other insects are also carriers of the vine disease and could potentially transmit the disease between forests and vineyards.
The golden yellow yellowing of the vine (GGV) is caused by a phytoplasma (Candidatus Phytoplasma vitis), a bacterium without a cell wall. During disease transmission, the introduced American grapevine cicada sucks sap from infected vines, absorbs the pathogen and passes it on to other vines. In vineyards, individual infected vines can quickly lead to epidemics. Insecticides are used as mandatory control measures and infected vines are removed.
