Cv. Maraština – a New Member of Malvasia Group

Among 48 cultivars holding the „ Malvasia“ name listed in the Vitis International Variety Catalogue (http://www.genres.de/idb/vitis/vitis.htm) there are also two cultivated in Croatia – „ Malvazija istarska“ and „ Malvasia dubrovačka“ . Since recently it is known that Malvasia dubrovacka is not a unique local cultivar (genotype) but the member of the synonym group which is scattered across the Mediterranean and even at the Atlantic islands (Malvasia delle Lipari, Malvasia di Sardegna, Malvasia de Sitges, Malvasia de Tenerife, ...) (Crespan et al., 2006). So far, Malvazija istarska seems to be a unique genotype spread only in the area of peninsula Istria and north-east of Italy. According to Boursiquot et al. (2007), the real number of Malvasia cultivars is not so large as it used to be believed, i.e. they found that several so called Malvasia cultivars are synonyms of already well known cultivars. Taking into account the historical fact that „ Malvasia wine“ used to be exported from Greece to Venice for centuries and an assumption that the name „ Malvasia“ has Greek origin (according to medieval city Monemvasia), as well as the fact that by vegetative propagation cultivars can be easily disseminated and preserved over the space and time we have hypothesized that Croatian Malvasias might still be grown (under different names) in Greece or some other places along the historical naval routs. We have used an opportunity to participate in the sailing expedition „ Malvasia Mediterranea 2005“ (http://www.malvasia-mediterranea.com/) to explore and sample the tissue for DNA of the cultivars along the eastern coast of Adriatic and Ionian Sea, and south of Peloponnesus. Twenty-eight grapevine samples from Greece (islands and hinterland), more than 30 from Croatia, and several from Italian coastal regions that used to be on the ancient naval routs from Monemvasia to Venice, have been assessed by genomic DNA SSR markers and analyzed in term of genetic similarity. Similarly as in several previous studies we have found a weak relationship of actual Greek cultivars with Croatian and Italian ones. We have found only one original genotype that is nowadays present in Greece, Italy and Croatia under three different names (synonyms), Pavlos, Malvasia lunga (M. del Chianti) and Maraština, respectively.