Monitoring and Genetic Characterization of Historical Grapevine Varieties (V. vinifera ssp.) from Styria in Slovenia

Abstract

The aim of this research work was to find historical varieties that existed in this area before phylloxera and to identify them on the basis of historical written sources and genetic analyses. At the beginning of the 19th century, around 300 grape varieties were cultivated in Styria. Between 2020 and 2022, old vineyards were monitored at 115 locations in Styria (between the Mura and Sava rivers) in Slovenia. The directly collected samples (340 grapevine accessions) were determined by molecular analysis with 24 SSR markers. A total of 66 different genotypes were detected. After comparison with the available databases, 29 historical varieties and 37 unknown historical genotypes were identified. Several parameters were calculated to evaluate the usefulness of the selected loci in this work, and a dendrogram representing the genetic similarities between the origins was created using the neighbor-joining method to investigate possible ancestry relationships in the sample set. The most common historical varieties were ‘Belina’ (‘Heunisch weiss’), ‘Vrbovec’ (‘Tantovina Eihenblaetrige’), ‘Ranfol’ (‘Ranfol beli’), and ‘Pelesovna’ (‘Vulpea’). Varieties from the current variety list were also frequently found, such as ‘Frankinja’ (‘Blaufraenkisch’) and ‘Žametovka’ (‘Kavčina črna’). In a few locations, one of the most important red varieties from the beginning of the 20th century was also found in this area (alongside ‘Frankinja’ and ‘Žametovka’), i.e., ‘Vranek’ (‘Zimmettraube balu’). At that time, this variety was planted in multi-variety vineyards and was preserved, but its importance in single-variety vineyards quickly declined due to female flower. In addition, genetic analyses have shown that 37 unknown historical genotypes have been found in this area. These genotypes need to be described ampelographically and technologically evaluated in the future. Most of the vegetative offsprings of these genotypes have already been transferred to the Meranova gene bank, where they can be accurately described ampelographically under the same pedoclimatic conditions.