Genetic diversity of some autochthonous white grape varieties from Romanian germplasm collections

We investigated the phenotypic and genetic diversity among 25 grapevine accessions of white grape maintained in a germplasm collection ex situ. The selected varieties were characterised using standardised ampelographic descriptors and microsatellite markers to obtaintheir complete description. The ampelographic analysis based on 24 OIV descriptors and the obtained first dendrogram based on common features, revealed the extent of the phenotypic diversity ranging from 0.29 (between Coarnă albă and Chardonnay) to 0.92 (between Crâmpoşie and Cioinic), without any connection with their supposed origin or the current geographic area of distribution. The SSR allelic analysis with nine standard markers proved and confirmed its high discrimination potential for genotype identification and diversity. The second cluster analysis aimed to evaluate the genetic relationships among analysed accessions,based on Dice's similarity coefficient, revealed two groups of varieties: the first group (A) included twelve accessions with a degree of similarity between 0.37 and 0.5. The second (B) included eleven accessions, with a similarity degree between 0.33 and 0.67. The genotypic cluster analysis showed a distinct lower similarity between the Majarcă albă variety and all the varieties from the first group, and between Busuioacă de Bohotin and all the analysed varieties. The phenotypic and genetic matrices and dendrograms, although not correlated, were complimentary and provided valuable information about the diversity of the grapevine genotypes and the identification of the synonyms.