Biodiversity of local Italian grapevine cultivars detected by SSR markers

Grapevine cultivation is an age-old tradition in the Veneto region of Italy where many ancient cultivars are still grown. Some of these cultivars are recognised as producing important Controlled Designations of Origin (D.O.C.) wines, while other local types have been lost through substitution by international cultivars. Despite the large number of ancient cultivars present in the Veneto region, many are not registered in the Italian Ampelographic Catalogue and therefore risk extinction. Moreover, synonyms and homonyms have often become popular at the local level, thus rendering correct varietal identification tricky. Our aim was to characterize ancient local cultivars to preserve the germoplasm and investigate their genetic relationships. Genetic variability was assessed in 18 local varieties using nuclear simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers to identify the most similar groups and verify if these groupings are in agreement with the known history of the cultivars.