conference schedule and program with abstracts - Horticulture ...

O-17
L. Wang* 1 , S. Li 1, 2 , P. Fan 1
The introduction, breeding and extension of wine grape in China
1 Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China; 2 Key Laboratory of Pant
Germplasm Enhancement and Speciality Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
*Corresponding author: ljwang@ibcas.ac.cn
The earliest viticulture in China was traced to Han Dynasty more than 2000 years ago. Modern
viticulture only began in the 1890s’ with the birth of Zhangyu Grape Wine Company which
introduced 120 cultivars to test in China. These cultivars belong to Vitis vinifera such as
‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ , ‘Merlot’, ‘Chardonnay’ and ‘Reisling’. However, the viticulture
including wine grape had very small area (3200 ha) before 1949. The wine grape breeding
programs in China were initiated from V. vinifera × V. amurensis in the Institute of Botany,
Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1954. The other research units also introduced western and
eastern European cultivars to evaluate and select at the same time. Although there was a little
increase of viticulture land in the 1950s’, the extension of wine grape was slow until the early
1970’s. With wine grape ‘Beichun’ released by Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, ‘Beichun’ became a main wine-making cultivar in the south of China with 7000 ha
expanding in area from 1970s’-1980s’. V. vinifera such as ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ became a main
variety for wine from 1990’s to now. However, ‘Beihong’ and ”Beimei’ released by the Institute
of Botany, CAS were extended rapidly in the past 5 years and produce the strong competition to
‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ et.al because these two cultivars have higher tolerance to cold and fungus
and 24-27% soluble solid content. In addition, wine grape ‘Gongniang 1’ and “Gongniang 2’
from V. vinifera × V. amurensis were introduced by Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and
three ‘Shuang’ series cultivars were originated from V. amurensis in Chinese Academy of
Agricultural Sciences. These cultivars had also high cold tolerance, but no good wine characters,
therefore they were only grown in Northeast of China. ‘Yan 73’ and ‘Yan 74’ which are good
cultivars for drying were introduced by Zhangyu Grape Wine Company. The 3 ‘Mei’ series
grape cultivars for red wine and 2 ‘Quan’ series grape cultivars for white wine were released by
Shandong Vine and Wine-making Institute. However, these cultivars were spread only in small
areas and basically kept as grape germplasm materials.
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