Grapevine Breeding: current status and future perspectives

Biotic and abiotic stresses are the driving forces for breeding resistant and more site adapted grapevine cultivars. Progress in cross breeding can be observed in today´s new grapevine cultivars, which reveal an excellent wine quality.

However, the demands on new cultivars is increasing notably due to the chal- lenging climate change and an enhanced demand on sustainability. Thus, additional breeding goals like the adaptation to changes in the ripening regime were introduced during the last decade.

Furthermore, long lasting, durable resistance came into reach since genome analyses resulted in numerous genetic loci for resistance against powdery mildew and downy mildew. Some of these loci are in agronomically well adapted genetic background thus permitting to use them for directly breeding of new elite variet- ies. Other loci are still in a poor genetic background requiring several crosses and steps of selection in order to improve the plants for other relevant agronomic properties e.g. yield and quality traits.

Another disease affecting grapevine is Botrytis bunch rot for which no resistances have been identifed. Physical barriers resulting in fast drying of grapes like loose bunch architecture and thick, hydrophobic grape berry surfaces are supportive to improve Botrytis resilience. Hence, loose bunches are a major breeding goal in addition to mildew resistances.

Further, new phenotyping tools, e.g. based on 2D/3D sensor data, can be applied in order to characterize bunch architecture or other traits of interest objectively and with high-throughput, thus improving breeding effciency.

The paper reproduced in this video-seminar was presented at the International Congress on Grapevine and Wine Sciences – ICGWS (Logroño, Spain, November 7-9, 2018) organized by ICVV.