conference schedule and program with abstracts - Horticulture ...

O-49
Molecular survey of Georgian traditional grapevine genetic resources
S. Imazio* 1 , D. Maghradze 2 , R. Bacilieri 3 , G. De Lorenzis 1 , A. Scienza 1 , P. This 3 , O. Failla 1 .
1 Dipartimento di Produzione Vegetale. Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy; 2 Institute
of Horticulture, Viticulture and Oenology, Tbilisi, Georgia; 3 UMR 1097 DIAPC INRA,
Montpellier SupAgro, Montpellier, France
*Corresponding author: serena.imazio@unimi.it
The South Caucasus area is considered one of the main centers of origin and domestication for
the cultivated grapevine V. vinifera L. sativa. The aim of this work is to study the genetic
structure of Georgian grapevines by analyzing 135 Georgian grapevine accessions using 20 SSR
molecular markers and to verify the contribution of Georgian germplasm to the European
viticulture. Among the 135 selected samples 112 are representatives of the traditional wine
making Georgian varieties and 23 were collected from several Georgian woodlands and, after
visual inspection, were considered representatives of Vitis vinifera sylvestris subspecies.
Molecular fingerprints (20 SSR loci) of all the 135 accessions were compared with data from the
2300 accessions conserved at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) grape
germplasm repository of Domaine de Vassal. Nei’s genetic distance was calculated among the
Vassal and Georgian samples and a dendrogram was built to verify the presence of synonyms
and to have an overview of the structure of Georgian grapevine germplasm compared with the
ones belonging to other countries. Results highlighted that most of Georgian viticulture is quite
isolated from elsewhere. These results seem to confirm that the Georgian typical varieties didn’t
spread to other European countries and, on the other hand Georgian viticulture did not have gene
flow from elsewhere. To verify the existence of parent-offspring relationships, the software MLrelate
and Famoz were used to analyze the dataset (Domaine de Vassal and Georgian
accessions). Interesting relationships were identified especially between Georgian samples and
among Georgian and neighbor countries. The apparent isolation of Georgian germplasm makes
this viticulture particularly interesting to be investigated, and for this reason we used Identity and
Microsat software to describe the structure of these samples and to perform a study on allele
frequencies and characterization. The results suggest that the Georgian viticulture is still strongly
correlated to its geographic origin, allowing us to clearly distinguish groups of accessions
belonging to different regions of the country. In the wild samples, the molecular fingerprint has
revealed very few mistakes or inter-specific crossings in the pool of collected samples and
highlighted that, as already verified for other regions, there is diversification among the wild and
cultivated compartments, even if this separation doesn’t seem to be, in the Georgian case, as
robust as seen in other viticultural areas.
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