Agricultural and biological characteristics of Georgian grapevine varieties

Research Not

Clarification of homonymy (misnaming) for a grapevine cultivar in Georgia: the case of 'Moldova' alias 'Aladasturi'

Two different grape cultivars are grown in Georgia under the name 'Aladasturi', one in the West and one in the East part of the Country. Investigation of ampelographic and ampelometric parameters and nuclear microsatellite markers demonstrated, that the cultivar from West Georgia is the real Georgian autochthonous wine and table grape cultivar 'Aladasturi', while the cultivar from East Georgia is the table grape cultivar 'Moldova' with high resistance to downy mildew, obtained in the Republic of Moldova in the 1960s. This cultivar was probably introduced to Georgia in the period of 1970-1980s. Similarity of berry and bunch characteristics of 'Moldova' and 'Aladasturi' might be the reason for creation of homonymy, respectively misnaming. The homonymous 'Aladasturi' finally turned out to be a misnomer

Effects of genotype and environmental conditions on grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) shoot morphology

Grapevine shoot morphology is widely studied for both ampelography and growing adaptation to environmental stresses. However, few is known concerning the relative contribution and interactions of the genotype and of the growing conditions to the vegetative growth. In this work, seven grapevine cultivars were studied in three geographically distant ampelographic collections to maximize the genotype and environment differences among samples. Phytomers were studied concerning the leaf area and the stem and petiole diameters and lengths. These measurements allowed the calculation of derivative parameters to describe the proportions among elements. Despite most of the studied parameters significantly discriminated both factors (cultivar and growing conditions), it was possible to identify, for each one of them, the most promising parameters based on their relative variance explanation. In fact, a negative correlation was observed between the roles of genotype and environment among the studied parameters. The low interaction effect suggested a stability in the plant behaviors, confirming the possibility to use vegetative descriptions for both cultivar discrimination and growing conditions. Future studies will be performed to develop specific indexes based on the phenotypical variability of shoot morphology described here

Description of the Vitis vinifera L. phenotypic variability in eno-carpological traits by a Euro-Asiatic collaborative network among ampelographic collections

The grapevine intra-specific variability captured an increasing interest during the last decades, as demonstrated by the number of recently funded European projects focused on the grapevine biodiversity preservation. However, nowadays, crop plants are mainly characterized by genotyping methods. The present work summarizes the phenotype data collected among 20 ampelographic collections spread in 15 countries, covering mostly of the viticultural areas in the Euro-Asiatic range: from Portugal to Armenia and from Cyprus to Luxembourg. Together with agro-climatic characterization of the experimental site, in two years, about 2400 accessions were described, following a common experimental protocol mainly focused on the carpological and oenological traits, obtaining a general overview of the distribution of the considered phenotypic traits in the cultivated Vitis vinifera species. The most replicated cultivars were selected and, for the subset of these reference cultivars, their behavior in the different environmental conditions over sites and years was described by ANOVA methods

Description of the vitis vinifera L. Phenotypic variability in eno-carpological traits by a Euro-Asiatic collaborative network among ampelographic collections

The grapevine intra-specific variability captured an increasing interest during the last decades, as demonstrated by the number of recently funded European projects focused on the grapevine biodiversity preservation. However, nowadays, crop plants are mainly characterized by genotyping methods. The present work summarizes the phenotype data collected among 20 ampelographic collections spread over 15 countries, covering most of the viticultural areas in the Euro-Asiatic region: from Portugal to Armenia and from Cyprus to Luxembourg. Together with agro-climatic characterization of the experimental site, over two years about 2,400 accessions were described. A common experimental protocol mainly focused on the carpological and oe-nological traits was followed, obtaining a general overview of the distribution of the considered phenotypic traits in the cultivated Vitis vinifera species. The most replicated cultivars were selected and, for the subset of these reference cultivars, their behavior in the different environmental conditions over sites and years was described by ANOVA methods

Study of less widespread and rare Georgian wine grape varieties

The genetic biodiversity of the Georgian genome of vine is a resource that creates Georgian viticulture – winemaking basis. According to its species diversity Solomon Cholokashvili Jigaura National International Category Collection GEO 038 of Mtskheta Municiality is really very interesting. On the background of the climate global changes it is necessary to complexly re-study the less widespread and rare grape varieties – according to fenological, chemical and enocarpological characteristics, and others, to spread them on their wide range – for the purpose of diversity of entrepreneurial varieties. In addition, information received as a result of the research will be used in variety breeding, as the original material for the parent couple's target selection. The study of the species for research was performed in field and laboratory conditions by complex using of different research methods

First results of the European grapevine collections' collaborative network: validation of a standard eno-carpological phenotyping method

A standard protocol for phenotyping structural and compositional aspects of the grape berry has been adopted by 18 East and West European germplasm collections during one season by testing a total of 469 accessions, including reference cultivars as well as local and minor germplasm accessions of specific interest. The protocol consists in the collection of triplicates for 26 phenotypic traits, from biological samples, each formed by 10 berries collected from 9 representative bunches from every analyzed accessions. The protocol concatenates the data from measurements and acquisitions, with the objective to generate new derived variables, which are expressed with different units (%; content per kg of grapes, per berry, per g of tissue). For each variable, the Least Significant Differences (LSD), to contrast a pair of single accession mean values, and the Confidence Intervals (CI), to estimate each single accession mean value, were computed. The application of the protocol revealed satisfactory results with high accuracy and efficiency in estimation of phenotypic traits of each accession. The whole data set will be useful for researchers, breeders and viticulturists in yield evaluation of grapevine cultivars, as well as in comparative analyses of environment-variety interaction