Grapevine genetic resources in croatia – preservation, evaluation and revitalization of autochthonous varieties

At the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century in Croatia were, according some literature data, more than 400 grape varieties. Unfortunately, because of many reasons (introduced pests and pathogens, modern economic pressure and introduction of world well known cultivars), drastic erosion of autochthonous cultivars has occurred. In last decade, many efforts in the preservation of grapevine biodiversity in Croatia have undertaken. Detail inventarisation of vine-growing regions in Croatia has shown that lot of autochthonous cultivars still can be found, but many of them are endangered and for a long time neglected. To preserve them against the extinguishing, we have established since 2001 national ex situ collection at the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, where we have collected about 100 autochthonous accessions so far. Besides, we started to build few regional collections, to save duplicates and enable their economic evaluation in appropriate climatic conditions. Besides multiplication and planting into collection, amphelographic description (OIV descriptors) and genetic analyses (at least 6 core SSR loci) of cultivars have been carrying out. So far, about 60 cultivars have known genetic profile, and all others are in the progress. Comparison of the microsatellite genotypes of the analyzed cultivars with international varieties shows that most of them have unique genotype which supports hypothesis they are Croatian autochthonous cultivars. In few cases microsatelites were also useful in clarification of synonym and homonym questions as well as parent/progeny relationships. All this data, along with photos from different plant parts, are supposed to be entered in the electronic database. We have observed a high quality potential in case of some neglected cultivars, and we started economic revitalization for few most promising (Malvasija dubrovačka, Crljenak kaštelanski). Beside that, we started with clonal and sanitary selection in case of most important native varieties (Plavac mali, Pošip, Babić, Žlahtina, Kraljevina, Škrlet, Plavina, Debit, Maraština, Vugava).