Characterization of grapevine cultivars autochthonous in the Carpathian basin with microsatellites

The Hungarian grapevine gene bank has been established in the Research Institute for Viticulture and Enology, Pecs. Since this institute has joined the GENRES CT96 No 81 EU project, our aim was to make the microsatellite fingerprinting of the ancient grapevine cultivars grown for centuries in the Carpathian Basin in collaboration with this institiute. We reported earlier that we had started testing and characterizing 96 cultivars maintained in the gene bank with microsatellite primers. After preliminary tests carried out with 5 varieties and 19 microsatellite primer pairs 6 were selected for comparison of the 96 varieties. Three of the primer pairs (VVMD5, VVMD36, VrZag79) are recommended by the GENRES CT96 No. 81 EU Project for identification and differentiation of the European grapevine cultivars or varieties. The other three (VVMD21, VrZag64, scu10vv) were applied based on the positive results of the preliminary examinations. Allele number varied between 3-6 in the analyses of 96 varieties, and the results provided possibility to differentiate the varieties based on their individual SSR pattern and allele sizes. In this paper we show results obtained on 5 % polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and allele sizes determined by ALFexpress DNA fragment analyser (Pharmacia) using CY-labelled VrZag64 and scu10 SSR primer pairs.