Breeding for mildew resistance in grapevine to improve environmental and socio-economic sustainability in hotspot areas of Veneto

In European viticulture, the control of mildews typically relies on frequent application of fungicides, which are becoming increasingly prohibitive because of their adverse effects on human health and the environment.
Therefore, to reduce the environmental impact of agrochemicals as well as to support the needs of local producers, CREA-VE started a breeding program in 2012 with the aim of selecting new genotypes with durable resistance to downy and powdery mildews, and good agro-enological traits.
For this purpose, the elite cultivar ‘Glera’ (used for Prosecco production) was crossed with different selections carrying multiple sources of resistance to mildews (Rpv3-1, Rpv3-2, Rpv3-3, Rpv10, Rpv12, Ren3, Ren9). The early selection of seedlings with inherited resistance loci was made by using molecular markers, and phenotyping of selected plants was performed through artificial inoculation (greenhouse and/or leaf disk assays). About 1000-1200 resistant genotypes have been selected to date.
Recently, sensor-based phenotyping has been adopted in order to speed up and improve the efficiency of grapevine evaluation programs.
In particular, multispectral analysis was performed on resistant and susceptible genotypes for the pre-symptomatic detection of infection.
Preliminary results were encouraging, so multi- and hyper-spectral analysis will be further developed on breeding progenies.

XII International Conference on Grapevine Breeding and Genetics

B. De Nardi, F. Santellani, T. Possamai, R. Velasco

‘Glera’, MAS, downy mildew, powdery mildew, phenotyping

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2019.1248.45