Grape selection for resistance to biotic and abiotic environmental factors

Abstract

Most of the viticultural regions of the USSR are located under conditions of limiting biotic and abiotic factors, with frosts, drought, fungal diseases, phylloxera, mites, grape berry moths and some others being of primary importance. The main breeding organizations have been creating for more than 40 years new table and wine cultivars with complex resistance according to long-term programs. These cultivars are own-rooted and capable of wintering in outdoor culture with a limited amount of spray treatments, if any.
In crossing, Amur grape and its hybrids, cultivars Seibel and Seyve Villard and some others are used as donors of resistance. Using biophysical and cytoembryological methods, gametes are treated with physical and chemical mutagenic factors in order to increase the variability range of F(1) seedlings, aiming at higher efficiency of selection. The process of selection is accelerated if seedlings are grown hydroponically. Analysis of the F(1) hybrid population determines the nature of the inheritance of valuable agricultural characters and the selection of pairs. The in vitro method is used when seedlings are grown from non-vital seeds, callus embryoids and in accelerated propagation of valuable genotypes providing virus and bacteria elimination.
More than 50 cultivars with complex resistance have been bred during 35 years. More than 10 of them have been recommended for culture (Moldova, Lyana, Vostorg, Sukholimanski biely, Pervenets Magaracha, and others), while the remainder are being tested in different viticultural regions of the Soviet Union.