INTRODUCTION OF APPLICATION OF CHINESE WILD GRAPES SPECIES

Abstract

China is one of the major centers of origin of Vitis species. To date, more than 38 species and varieties have been reported to originate in China among 70 known species. In the past 20 years, researchers have focused on resistance to main fungal diseases of Vitis species native to China. The results indicate that there are differences in resistance to the diseases among these species and clones. However, the Chinese wild species V. pseudoreticulata ?Baihe-35-1? holds higher resistance to disease traits than the other wild species. Chinese Vitis species have many advantages over V. vinifera such as possessing many resistant genes to fungal diseases as well as good flavor. Species V. davidii, V. quinquangularis and V. amurensis have better economic traits than other species and are used as wine materials directly in southeast, southwest and northeast China; Moreover, they also easily hybridize with V. vinifera. Thus, it is possible to transfer fungal disease-resistant genes into V. vinifera through crossing for developing new disease-resistant grape varieties. At present, we are interested in studying how Chinese wild grapes sense fungal diseases stress using the Chinese wild V. pseudoreticulata accession ?Baihe-35-1?. The goals are to identify key components that can potentially be engineered for improvement of European grapes that encounter pathogen stresses. In the future, our goal aims to understand the host defense mechanism and identify key genes in resistant Chinese wild Vitis germplasm to provide valuable information and foundational resources for breeding of highly resistant cultivars.