conference schedule and program with abstracts - Horticulture ...

P-69
‘Ribolla Gialla’ from north eastern Italy, ‘Rebula’ from northern Balkans and ‘Robola’
from Ionian islands: do they belong to the same population variety or are they genetically
different?
S. Imazio 1* , G. De Lorenzis 1 , J. Vouillamoz 2 , Z. Korosec-Koruza 3 , D. Rusjan 3 , N. Nikolao 4 , A.
Scienza 1 , O. Failla 1
1 Dipartimento di Produzione Vegetale, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy;
2 University of Neuchâtel, National Centre of Competence in Research on Plant Survival,
Neuchâtel, Switzerland; 3 Biotechnical Faculty, Institute of Fruit Growing, University of
Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia; 4 Department of Agriculture, laboratory of Viticulture, Aristotele
University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
*Corresponding author: serena.imazio@unimi.it
‘Ribolla Gialla’ is an extremely old grape cultivated in the Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia in
the provinces of Gorizia and Udine. Once part of the Venetian Republic, Friuli Venezia Giulia
has been for long time an important step along the Mediterranean spice route from the Byzantine
Empire to the trading centre of Venice. During the Middle Ages, travelers passing through this
area are supposed to have brought grapevines from Balkans and Anatolia. Referring to historical
information and reports Ribolla has been the leading quality wine used as a representative sign to
honor famous figures of the ages. Known in Friuli since Roman Empire, for some authors,
Ribolla would correspond to the Roman famous ‘Avola’ wine. Others believe that the Roman
‘Punicinum’ used Ribolla as its base wine. After the splendors and reputation gained by Ribolla
wines in the past centuries, the beginning of the 1900s marked a difficult period for the wine,
with a very modest reputation. And, in the ‘60s of the past Century the interest in the cultivation
of Ribolla variety decreased, in the Italian region, leaving place for the cultivation of Tocai
Friulano, Pinot Bianco and Grigio, Sauvignon, Traminer and Riesling. Despite the historical
documents reporting the longstanding tradition of Ribolla cultivation and winemaking in Friuli-
Venezia Giulia the origin of this variety is still questionable. The neighbor Regions Slovenia and
Dalmatia have under cultivation a white berried wine-grape variety called Rebula, and in Greece
(in the Ionic islands of Kefalonia) we have white wines produced with a variety named Robola.
The aim of this work is to study the genetic structure of these 3 groups of white varieties and
verify the existence of genetic relationships linking these accessions sharing the same name. For
this purpose 20 SSR loci were tested to fingerprint 30 Ribolla-Rebula-Robola accessions
uniformly distributed in the 4 areas of cultivation. Data obtained proved the existence of some
synonym accessions and relationships between Ribolla-Rebula and Robola accessions. Basing on
these results, indigenous varieties belonging to the same area of cultivation of the Ribolla-
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