Winemaking in Cold Regions with Buried Viticulture in China

China has a long history of grape cultivation and wine making, and it has grown to be one of the most important countries in terms of grape cultivation, wine production, and wine consumption. According to meteorological and geographical regionalization, China’s wine production area has been divided into 11 regions, the majority of which are located in cold and mid-temperate regions in northern China, where vines must be buried in winter and unearthed in spring. In China, the main cultivated grape varieties are similar, with the red variety accounting for more than 80% of the total, while the white variety represents just 20%. Currently, Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widely planted variety, but Marselan, another red variety, have recently shown good prospects. Wild grape species such as Vitis amurensis, Vitis davidii, and Vitis quinquangularis are widely planted in northern and southern China because of their good resistance to local climate. This chapter highlights some common wild grape varieties in China, as well as the wines made from them. Also, some winemaking pretreatment techniques are reported.

Local Names of Wild Grapevine in Georgia and Its Ethnobotanical Use

Wild grapevine Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris (C.C.Gmel.) Hegi is a typical plant of Georgian flora, spread in our country. Consequently, a numerous number of local synonym names of this plant are available in different historical-ethnographic provinces of Georgia. Among these names ‘Krikina’, ‘Babilo’, ‘Mortskhula’, ‘Brdzghuamli’ and ‘Dzghvamli’ are more spread, having different spelling variations. The great contrubution of wild grape is that it, as an ancestor of cultivated grapevine, made the basis of grape breeding in Georgia and is a distant relative of our varieties. Besides, as it was demonstrated by the ethnobotanical research, due to long period present in the forests of Georgia the local people used this plant as a food (grape, pickles), a beverage (young fermented wine ‘Machari’, wine, grappa), a construction material (buildings, door for a church, breedge), a tool for washing Qvevri, a pollinator for grape cultivars, a honey plant, a rootstock, a planting material for vineyards.

Multiple independent recombinations led to hermaphroditism in grapevine

Hermaphroditic (perfect) flowers were a key trait in grapevine domestication, enabling a drastic increase in yields due to the efficiency of self-pollination in the domesticated grapevine (Vitis vinifera L. ssp. vinifera). In contrast, all extant wild Vitis species are dioecious, each plant having only male or female flowers. In this study, we identified the male (M) and female (f) haplotypes of the sex-determining region (SDR) in the wild grapevine species V. cinerea and confirmed the boundaries of the SDR. We also demonstrated that the SDR and its boundaries are precisely conserved across the Vitis genus using shotgun resequencing data of 556 wild and domesticated accessions from North America, East Asia, and Europe. A high linkage disequilibrium was found at the SDR in all wild grape species, while different recombination signatures were observed along the hermaphrodite (H) haplotype of 363 cultivated accessions, revealing two distinct H haplotypes, named H1 and H2. To further examine the H2 haplotype, we sequenced the genome of two grapevine cultivars, 'Riesling' and 'Chardonnay'. By reconstructing the first two H2 haplotypes, we estimated the divergence time between H1 and H2 haplotypes at ∼6 million years ago, which predates the domestication of grapevine (∼8,000 y ago). Our findings emphasize the important role of recombination suppression in maintaining dioecy in wild grape species and lend additional support to the hypothesis that at least two independent recombination events led to the reversion to hermaphroditism in grapevine.

Molecular characterization of wild grapes from northeastern part of Turkey

Progress in grape breeding requires the exploitation of genetic variation among market classes, races and gene pools. Wild grapevines (Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris) are being endangered in their natural habitats and high priorities should be given to the wild germplasm. Turkey is one of the richest sources of wild grapevine and they mostly grown on forest trees on river basin. The present study was carried out to determine the amount of genetic variation and the degree of relatedness among 23 wild grape genotypes using 17 simple-sequence-repeat markers (SSR). Two international grape cultivars, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are also included study. Number of alleles per locus of the 17 Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers ranged from 3.0 to 14.0 and a total of 162 alleles with an average of 9.53 alleles per locus. The average expected and observed heterozygosity values were 0.773 and 0.781, respectively, which exhibited high level of genetic diversity in the wild grape germplasm. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean analysis revealed three main genetic clusters that partially separated wild grape genotypes each other and. The international cultivars formed a out group. The high genetic diversity among native wild grapes from Coruh valley is suggesting that this area could be one of the centre of diversity of the specie. The results indicate a substantial genetic diversity in V. vinifera ssp. sylvestris and the need of exploring a wider area to increase the chance of finding a particular genotype.