Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X ConferenceJanuary 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Workshop: Intl Grape Genome Project
The characters which are often considered to constitute a good grapevine cultivar are polygenic in their inheritance thus the probability of recombining in a hybrid the set of genes that determine the essential properties of a given variety is very low. Nowadays, genomics offers the possibility to overcome traditional scepticism on breeding of perennial plants supplying powerful techniques to marker assisted selection. Our interest is focussed on three directions: (i) development of a solid set of co-dominant markers; (ii) selection of interesting segregating populations; (iii) large laboratory automation. Framework linkage maps based on microsatellite markers for intra- and inter-specific Vitis hybrids will be used as backbone for more detailed genetic and physical mapping efforts. More than hundred segregating SSRs have been selected by testing the primer sequences obtained from the Vitis Microsatellite Consortium cooperation and about 50% of them are heterozygous in both parents. Sub-sets of the same populations, two segregating for resistance to pathogens and two segregating for berry quality traits, are used to test the distribution of SSCPs identified from gene sequences of seven parental plants. A large ESTs sequencing program is ongoing which supplies the background for a systematic SNPs development and scoring by automation. To date 60 SNPs have been developed from the first few hundreds sequences (ESTs), selected from five sub-groups: (i) pathogen-related, (ii) anthocyanin metabolism, (iii) sugar metabolism, (iv) cell signalling and (v) photosynthesis-related. SNP loci will later represent the basis for monitoring the grape genome during varietal development. DNA arrays (genotypers), with the scope to assess the allelic state at a given category of genes, and map based cloning approach are also in our program.