Vision 2025 - National Research Centre for Grapes

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
THE INDIAN GRAPE SCENARIO
Presently the area under grape cultivation in India is about 60,000 ha (FAO Stat 2005) with the
production in the range of 1.2-1.6 and 0.55 - 0.65 million MT of fresh grape and raisin, respectively.
India has achieved a reasonably high level of productivity of grapes but at the cost of maintaining
the quality as per the international standards and shelf life. The availability of fruits is confined to
specific periods of year and the prices are ruled by the market availability. Low temperature storage
of fruits is not economical and hence not in practice for domestic market while raisin making solves
the problem of grape perishability to some extent but the price realization is not much. Further, grape
has to compete with other fruits during their availability period in the market for consumer
preference.
In spite of this, the grape growers as an organized sector are persisting with grape cultivation and
look forward to new technologies for sustaining the productivity, improving quality, reducing the
cost of cultivation, extending the area and the season of harvest, high value end-uses especially wine
making. Few State Governments in the country have favourable policies for the promotion of wine
production in the form of wine parks in industrial complexes and setting up of wine training institutes
and other economy packages. Hence, optimum economic yield of quality grape, price and their cost
of production, the seasons of their availability, and diversification for value added products like
raisin, wine and juice are the key words in Indian viticulture. This Centre has, therefore, after
thorough deliberations with the grape growers, exporters, raisin and wine producers; advisory bodies
like Research Advisory Committee and Quinquennial review Team, formulated a number of focused
research programmes to address these key issues.
RESOURCES AVAILABLE WITH THE INSTITUTE
The Centre has about 46.78 ha of land area, out of which 1.6 ha is under buildings, 1.2 ha is under
roads, 1.2 ha under polyhouses and nursery, 4.8 ha under germplasm and new hybrid / clones; 8.4 ha
planted with table grapes for experiments. 4.0 ha is under preparation to be planted with wine grape
varieties for new experiments. The Centre has ten well-equipped laboratories with basic and
sophisticated equipments, however, other essential equipments for the new proposed research
activities are included in the XI Plan EFC document of the Institute.
RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE INSTITUTE
In the first decade of its existence, the Center has made significant achievement in collecting the
grape germplasm within the country and augmenting it with that from abroad. Morphological and
molecular characterization of the accessions is in progress and will be completed within a short time.
Sources of resistance to downy mildew disease are identified and the information is being utilized
for resistance breeding programme and to develop molecular markers for downy mildew resistance.
Germplasm sources with multiple disease resistance will be known shortly. Evaluation for other
parameters is in progress. A database was created, and copyrighted, to manage all this information.
Hybrids developed at this Centre are being evaluated in the field for various traits, while promising
new clones viz. A 17/3, KR-W, A18/3 etc. and popular imported varieties viz. Red Globe, Crimson
Seedless, Fantasy Seedless and Italia are under multilocational evaluation in grower's vineyards.
Dogridge was found a promising rootstock for Thompson Seedless and Tas-A-Ganesh grape under
salt and drought conditions. Other potential rootstocks like 110 R, B2 - 56, 1103 P, 99 R, 140 Ru,