Abstract
The varietal authentication of wines is fundamental for assessing wine quality, and it is part of its compositional profiling. The availability of historical, cultural and chemical composition information is extremely important for quality evaluation. DNA-based techniques are a powerful tool for proving the varietal composition of a wine. SSR-amplification of genomic residual Vitis vinifera DNA, namely Wine DNA Fingerprinting (WDF) is able to produce strong, analytical evidence concerning the monovarietal nature of a wine, and for blended wines by generating the probability of the presence/absence of a certain variety, all in association with a dedicated bioinformatics elaboration of genotypes associated with possible varietal candidates. Together with WDF we could exploit Bioinformatics techniques, due to the number of grape genomes grown. In this paper, the use of WDF and the development of a bioinformatics tool for allelic data validation, retrieved from the amplification of 7 to 10 SSRs markers in the Vitis vinifera genome, are reported. The wines were chosen based on increasing complexity; from monovarietal, experimental ones, to commercial monovarietals, to blended commercial wines. The results demonstrate that WDF, after calculation of different distance matrices and Neighbor-Joining input data, followed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) can effectively describe the varietal nature of wines. In the unknown blended wines the WDF profiles were compared to possible varietal candidates (Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel), and the output graphs show the most probable varieties used in the blend as closeness to the tested wine. This pioneering work should be meant as to favor in perspective the multidisciplinary building-up of on-line databanks and bioinformatics toolkits on wine. The paper concludes with a discussion on an integrated decision support system based on bioinformatics, chemistry and cultural data to assess wine quality.
Highlights
In the last few years the quality and safety of food products has become an essential requirement guaranteed to consumers in all fields of agricultural production
Wine DNA bioinformatics and genetic analysis admixture quantity and quality obtained from each wine from an early temporal phase of this study are reported as supplementary material in S2 Table
The bioinformatics applied to DNA analysis in wine reveals to be an effective tool, confirming the reliability of DNA analysis for wine varietal assessment that must comply to legal requisites concerning wine production and commercialization
Summary
In the last few years the quality and safety of food products has become an essential requirement guaranteed to consumers in all fields of agricultural production. Regulations regarding wine production have profound effects on the character and quality of the wine Such regulations can be found on local, national, and international levels, and regulatory laws must communicate with all the others [1]. Following the EEC criteria for wine quality and in order to organize the many varieties of wine throughout Italy the Italian government established Law 930/1963 classifying wines with the title of DOC ("Denominazione di Origine Controllata"). This system of classification further evolved, and in the 1980s the first DOCG ("Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita") emerged, a title awarded to any variety that had maintained DOC status for at least five years. In order to commercialize a wine as monovarietal, with the exception of specific wines such as the Brunello di Montalcino and Barolo which contain 100% of a specific vine, it must contain at least 85% of the grape variety mentioned on the label
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