Grapes

Abstract

Grape is a major crop worldwide in which production is primarily driven by the ability to grow high-quality fruit. Breeding objectives vary by region and market class of grape, but many programs seek to combine high quality fruit with improved disease resistance and environmental adaptation, or to continue advances in quality attributes. Grapevines are predominantly a grafted crop, making grape rootstocks, and rootstock breeding, vitally important in the growth of the global viticulture industry. There are vast germplasm resources available within the genus Vitis, but worldwide production is dominated by cultivars of one species, V. vinifera. Species other than V. vinifera are of significant interest as useful sources of desirable traits in many modern breeding programs. Little is known concerning the genetic control of most traits in grape beyond the fact that many are quantitatively controlled. Substantial international effort has occurred in the development of molecular genetic and genomic resources for grape. Many tools are now in place to identify the causal genes underlying important traits and to better understand the allelic diversity that exists in important genes.