Management & Conservation of Grapevine Genetic Resources (GRAPEGEN06)

The main objective of GrapeGen06 is to contribute to the successful long-term preservation of the Vitis genetic resources for the use of future generations. By ensuring an optimized characterization of these resources, we will promote their use and ensure the competitiveness and robustness of the European wine sector.

Objective 1: Monitor still existing Vitis germplasm in Europe, including Eastern countries
For this general objective, the intermediary objectives during Year 3 were:
For cultivated material maintained in collections:
•To update data already recorded in the database developed during project Genres081 for 10 partners
•To finish enter passport data for the 23 other partners that joined the European genetic resources community within this new project.
For old autochthonous cultivars in on-farm conservation
•To confirm the identity of the material and continue characterization
For wild material in-situ:
•Finish survey in order to identify the individuals still existing in wild conditions in the different countries of the partners
•Start the morphological and molecular analysis of part of the individuals.

Objective 2: Describe this germplasm, using common morphological, agronomic, and molecular descriptors and linking them to a unique web-database (www.eu-vitis.de).
This aspect will take 4 years to be achieved. The intermediary objectives for this point were to perform as much analysis as possible and enter the data in the database.

Objective 3: Implement true-to-type identification of varieties decreasing the number of errors, homonyms and synonyms affecting the European collections
In order to publish a precise online catalogue of the European genetic resources available in the different germplasm collections, we have to ensure that the possible homonyms or synonyms or questionable accessions in the collections are identified and compared.
As this work need the development of tools and the availability of morphological and SSR data, the work planned in year 3 was:
 To implement the database with new tools enabling easy loading of the data
 Develop tool (excel macro) enabling the easy comparison of data for the search of synonyms or errors in the collections
 Work on a list of questionable cultivars that need morphological and SSR data to be identified.

Objective 4: Promote an overall optimized conservation scheme for the safe conservation of the Vitis germplasm including Vitis sylvestris currently threatened of extinction, and involving several conservation means (ex-situ collections, cryopreservation and on-farm conservation by farmers and professionals)
This action was dependant on the accumulation of data (identification of wild individuals or of on-farm vineyards, trueness-to-type of the individuals,…) before to draw a global scheme. The safe conservation of germplasm nevertheless needs the development of methodologies for cryo-preservation. Development or adaptations of technologies for cryoconservation of seeds, pollen were thus accomplished and a method for cryoconservation of dormant buds is still under development.





•Action objectives during the reporting period (suite)
Objective 5: Ensure the overall accessibility of the information by the mean of diverse media (scientific papers, technical papers, general public publications, websites, ..) and ensure the availability of healthy material for the use by European growers

For this aspect, much of the work done in2009 was towards the development of the database and it’s opening to the public. Scientific papers and general public publications will be one objective of the work to be done during 2010.
.
:
• Key results achieved and outputs

Results and outputs of the projects will be given according to the general objectives presented previously. Nevertheless, since the detailed results will be given by WP (see part 2), this presentation will somewhat be different. Individual contributions of the partner were not added to this document but will be available on request from the coordinators.

In relation with Objective 1

Result 1: Finalisation of the adaptation of Multi Crop Passport Descriptor (MCPD) to Vitis specific purposes
Result 2: Identification of more than 189 populations of V. sylvestris and 1140 individuals.

In relation with Objective 2

Result 3: Completion of about 75 % of the genotyping within WP1 and 78 % of data for WP2
Result 4: Analysis of 511 V. sylvestris accessions for morphological data and of 250 accession by SSR
Result 5: Pursuit of the on-farm analysis for the 113 cultivars including estimation of their sanitary status
Result 6: 2.515 pictures available for cultivars

In relation with Objective 3
Result 7: Identification of a first set of questionable varieties using SSR and morphology, demonstrating the feasibility of the task
Result 8: Development and distribution of a macro enabling the search for synonyms or errors
Result 9: Use of SSR data from both WP1 et WP5 in order to identify possible synonyms or errors.

In relation with Objective 4
Result 10: First encouraging results for the development of protocol for dormant bug cryoconservation.

In relation with Objective 5
Result 14: Opening of the web database to the public.