PHYLOGENETICS ANALYSIS OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIVE 'CYNTHIANA'/'NORTON' GRAPE CULTIVAR USING DNA MICROSATELLITE MARKERS

Abstract

‘Cynthiana’/‘Norton’ is considered the best American native grape variety for fine wine with suspected to have tolerance to PD (Pierce’s disease) and proven low susceptibility to foliar and fruit disease. The variety has been very successfully grown for commercial wine production for more then a century in the eastern United States and for the past decade in Louisiana within PD zone as well. Most of the grapevine varieties in existence today are centuries old and are considered to have arisen by various means: domestication of wild vines, spontaneous crosses between wild vines and varieties, and crosses between two or more varieties. Using the methods of molecular analysis, the pedigree describing the genetic history of grape variety can be reconstructed. DNA microsatellites have proved to be the markers of choice for this purpose since they are transmitted in a codominant Mendelian manner. It is assumed that ‘Cynthiana’/‘Norton’ is originated from Vitis aestivalis, Michaux. We are investigating the phylogenetics of the ‘Cynthiana’/‘Norton’ grape via data mining in the North American grape germplasm collections, ampelographic analysis and specifically expressed in the variety microsatellite markers. We are using an already-published set of ten pairs of SSR primers designed for Vitis riparia. For the purpose developing more specific markers, ‘Norton’ publicly available expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were used to screen for SSR. Two 202 SSRs out of 2,101 ESTs were located and the promising SSR primers were synthesized for specific amplification in the targeted grape accessions. This study is designed to identify the pedigree and genetic make up of ‘Cynthiana’/‘Norton’ grape and to verify that this particular grape variety carry tolerance to Pierce’s disease and is appropriate for high quality red wine production under Florida environmental conditions.