New Horizons for Grapevine Breeding

摘要

The introduction of fungi - particularly powdery and downy mildew - and of phylloxera during the second half of the 19l century was the catalyst to initiate enormous grapevine breeding activities in several European countries. These efforts aimed at the combination oi resistance traits found e.g. in American Vitis species and quality traits found in the cultivated Vitis vinifera L. subsp. vinifera. It became evident that grapevine breeding is a huge challenge due to the complexity of traits and longbreeding cycles of about 25 years. Despite some major drawbacks, at the onset of the 20th century rootstocks became available solving the phylloxera crisis. In contrast to the progress in rootstock breeding for some decades, it was believed that the aimfor scions of combining resistance against the mildew diseases and quality can not be achieved. By the end of the 20th century, however, first cultivars were introduced into the market showing high wine quality and good field resistance against powdery and downy mildew. Simultaneously new technologies were developed tc genetically dissect traits e.g. by QTL analysis and molecular markers were introduced into breeding research. Genetic fingerprints characterizing cross parents, marker assisted selection,and marker assisted backcrossing recently initated a paradigm shift in grapevine breeding from a purely empirical work to the strictly goal-oriented design of crosses and of gene management. These new tools and nexl generation sequencing technologies will reduce the breeding cycle by up to 10 years. In addition, genetic engineering opens the door tc improve existing cultivars, for which otherwise any improvement of resistance is utterly impossible.