Conservation, evaluation and revitalization of native grapevine varieties in Croatia

At the beginning of the 20(th) century more than 400 grape varieties were under cultivation in Croatia. But because of introduced pests and pathogens, modern economic pressure and the changeover to internationally well-known varieties, a drastic germplasm erosion has occurred. During the last decade, a detailed inventory of wine-growing regions has shown that a lot of autochthonous varieties still can be found, but many of them are extremely rare and endangered. For their conservation collecting expeditions have been organized and in 2001 a national ex situ collection was established at the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb consisting nowadays of more than 140 native accessions. In addition, several regional (back-up) collections have been established to keep duplicates and enable economic evaluation under appropriate climatic conditions. Along with conservation efforts, a thorough amphelographic description and genetic fingerprinting of the varieties were carried out. So far, more than 100 varieties have been positively identified and genetically profiled according to the protocols of the EU project GrapeGen06. Consequently, their photos, descriptions and genetic profiles have been entered into the EU Vitis Database. Comparison of their microsatellite genotypes with those of international varieties showed most of them having unique genotypes supporting the hypothesis of their Croatian origin. Microsatellite analysis enabled clarification of synonyms and homonyms as well as analyses of parent-progeny relationships. In case of few neglected varieties a high quality potential was observed, and their economic revitalization has been started ('Malvasija dubrovacka', 'Crljenak kastelanski', 'Sansigot'). Clonal and sanitary selections of major native varieties ('Plavac mali', 'Posip', 'Zlahtina', 'Kraljevina', 'Skrlet', 'Plavina', 'Debit', 'Marstina', 'Vugava', 'Grk') also have been launched.'