Characterization of oriental cultivars of grapevine using a reference allele system of microsatellite data and assignment test

Abstract

Six Oriental cultivars of Vitis vinifera, which are native to Japan or China, as well as 2 cultivars of V. labrusca as references, were characterized by 6 microsatellite markers with coded reference alleles. One allele in Oriental cultivars and 3 in V. labrusca have not been reported for Occidental cultivars. Assignment analysis using these data and reported data with grouping of V. labrusca, Oriental cultivars, and vine-growing regions of Occidental cultivars showed that 4 out of 8 Oriental cultivars, but only 3 out of 162 Occidental cultivars, were assigned to Oriental cultivars. These assignments are in accordance with the genetic distances calculated from microsatellite data. These results show that Oriental cultivars have a certain degree of genetic difference from Occidental cultivars within the species V. vinifera.