Assessment of genetic diversity of Vitis vinifera local cultivars of northern Greece as a means for valorization of vine and wine territories

Résumé 0

Grapevine cultivation and wine production occur in Greece since antiquity. Modern wineries have focused on the cultivation of international varieties; however, a marked trend to the revival of the local grapevine varieties has been noted in the last two decades underlying the confidence and the intention to invest on the local plant resources aiming to produce unique products. This brings up the urgent necessity to genetically identify the local varieties that constitute the Greek vineyard so as they will be available for further development. Simple-Sequence Repeats (SSRs) molecular markers, including those proposed by the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) as molecular descriptors, have been used to genotype: i) 12 wine producing varieties maintained in the ex-situ ampelographic collection of the Greek Gene Bank (GGB), ii) 30 varieties that have been collected from various sites of northern Greece in order to verify and confirm their identity, and iii) 11 international varieties that have been used as references. The final dendrogram displays the genetic closeness between the analysed varieties, bringing up cases of synonymies and homonymies.