Intraspecific recurrent selection in V. vinifera: an effective method for breeding of high quality, disease-, cold-, and drought -resistant grapes.

In China, ninety percent of the varieties of V. vinifera are protected from the cold by burying the vines for safe over-wintering, a labor-intensive practice that restricts the sustainable development of the grape and wine industry. An alternative solution is to breed cold-resistant varieties that can tolerate the local climatic conditions. The conventional cold-resistant breeding of grapes worldwide is mainly performed by the cross-breeding of wild species or V. labrusca and V. vinifera, so that new varieties obtain major cold-resistance genes from wild species or V. labrusca but maintain the high-quality genes of V. vinifera. However, there seems to be a close linkage between the major cold-resistance genes and the genes that control the poor characteristics of wild species or V. labrusca. The fruit traits of the hybrid progenies were unable to completely overcome the inheritance of the inferior traits of the wild parent or American parent. For grape genetic improvement for quality and disease-resistance, we propose use of minor-polygenes substitution and accumulation (MPSA) and intraspecific recurrent selection in V. vinifera (IRSV). "Ecolly" bred by this method has strong disease-, cold-, and drought- resistance, and is an excellent variety for brewing dry white wine and distilled spirits. At − 20 °C, the freezing damage degree of 50% winter buds of Ecolly ranged from 0.7 to 1.0, while the damage degree of Chardonnay ranged from 1.7 to 2.0. Thus, the variety is widely cultivated in many soil-burial over-wintering areas, but does not need to be buried to survive over-wintering. In summary, Ecolly is a successful case demonstrating the effectiveness of MPSA and IRSV for cold-resistance grape breeding, which provide a new thought for breeding new grapevine variety with cold resistance and quality brewing characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]