Comparative assessment of genomic, phenomic, and metabolomic prediction models in biparental grapevine breeding populations

Abstract

Accelerating grapevine breeding for disease resistance and climate adaptation remains constrained by long generation cycles. We benchmarked genomic (SNP), phenomic (NIRS), and metabolomic (untargeted LC-MS) prediction for 24 agronomic traits in a biparental population phenotyped over three years. Seven statistical frameworks and four tissue x timepoint combinations (wood; vineyard leaves at budbreak and flowering; greenhouse leaves at flowering) were evaluated, together with feature-wise BLUPs across samples. Cross-year and cross-population analyses with two additional populations assessed temporal robustness and transferability. Genomic prediction was most accurate (up to r = 0.83), metabolomic prediction was intermediate (up to r = 0.59), and phenomic prediction was lowest (up to r = 0.39) despite its lower acquisition cost. Metabolite features were more heritable than NIR wavelengths, for which most unexplained variation remained residual under the fitted model. Multi-omics integration produced limited overall gains. These results support genomic selection as the primary approach, with metabolomic or phenomic screening considered only for traits and sampling designs that show reproducible predictive signal.