Identification and characterization of grapevine genetic resources maintained in Eastern European Collections

The Near East and the Caucasus regions are considered as gene and domestication centre for grapevine. In an earlier project "Conservation and Sustainable Use of Grapevine Genetic Resources in the Caucasus and Northern Black Sea Region" (2003-2007) it turned out that 2,654 accessions from autochthonous cultivars maintained by Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine in ten grapevine collections may belong to 1,283 cultivars. But trueness to type assessment by morphology and genetic fingerprinting still needed to be done. In COST Action FA1003 a first step in that direction was initiated. The following countries participated: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Mainly <em>Vitis vinifera</em> accessions (1098 samples) and 76 <em>Vitis sylvestris</em> individuals were analyzed by nine SSR-markers (VVS2, VVMD5, VVMD7, VVMD25, VVMD27, VVMD28, VVMD32, VrZag62, VrZag79). Cultivar identity confirmation/rejection was attempted for 306 genotypes/cultivars by comparison of the generated genetic profiles with international SSR-marker databases and ampelographic studies. The outcome proved unambiguously the necessity of morphologic description and photos (a) for comparison with bibliography, (b) for a clear and explicit definition of the cultivar and (c) the detection of sampling errors and misnomers. From the 1,098 analyzed accessions, 997 turned out to be indigenous to the participating countries. The remaining 101 accessions were Western European cultivars. The 997 fingerprints of indigenous accessions resulted in 658 unique profiles/cultivars. From these 353 (54 %) are only maintained in the countries of origin and 300 (46 %) unique genotypes exist only once in the Eastern European collections. For these 300 genotypes duplicate preservation needs to be initiated. In addition, the high ratio of non redundant genetic material of Eastern European origin suggests an immense unexplored diversity. Documentation of the entire information in the European <em>Vitis</em> Database will assist both germplasm maintenance and documentation of cultivar specific data.