MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF VITIS VINIFERA ACCESSIONS FROM UMBRIA REGION

We will report the genotyping of some Vitis vinifera L. accessions from Umbria region (Central Italy). In particular we are interested in assigning the correct genotype to a so called "Greco nero" accession traced in the surroundings of the town Todi which shows interesting traits in micro-wine making trials. The mentioned Greco nero accession is compared to other Greco nero accessions found in Umbria region and maintained in the grapevines collection of the Dept. of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, and to the standard registered grapevine cultivar "Greco nero" from Calabria region. At the same time we are attempting the characterization of the "Cornetta" grapevine cultivar which is traditionally used for the production of the Vernaccia di Cannara wine. From ampelographic measurements, the cv. Cornetta was assigned to the cv. Fortana (Cartechini and Moretti, 1989); we intend to verify if these two cultivars are synonymous. Genotyping is being carried out by molecular markers such as AFLPs and SSRs as reported by This et al., 2004. Cartechini A., Moretti G. (1989). Una sinonimia: l'uva cornetta dell'Umbria corrisponde alla cv. Fortana. Annali della Facoltà di Agraria dell'Università di Perugia, Vol. XLIII: 9-18. This P., Jung A., Boccacci P., Borrego J., Botta R., Costantini L., Crespan M., Dangl G.S., Eisenheld C., Ferreira-Monteiro F., Grando S., Ibanez J., Lacombe T., Laucou V., Magalhaes R., Meredith C.P., Milani N., Peterlunger E., Regner F., Zulini L., Maul E. (2004). Development of a standard set of microsatellite reference alleles for identification of grape cultivars. Theor Appl Genet. 109 (7):1448-58.