South Africa Wine Research Projects

2. VITICULTURE RESEARCH PROJECT IN PROGRESS

THE MAINTENANCE AND EXPANSION OF A GENETIC SOURCE FOR VINES

P04000068 Ms Phyllis Burger, ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij, Stellenbosch Project is co-funded by the ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij Ongoing

AIM AND RELEVANCE: This project is responsible for the maintenance and expansion of the South African national grape genebank. It involves: • Maintaining field genebanks and a backup repository; • Importing of promising cultivars for wine making and breeding purposes; • Adding newly imported accessions and new locally bred accessions to the genebank; • Supplying plant material to local Plant Improvement Organisations and to institutions abroad on request; • Propagating backup plants of accessions that are dying in field genebanks; • Ampelographical description of cultivars for authentication; • DNA fingerprinting of accessions in the genebank; • Viticultural and oenological evaluation of promising wine grape cultivars.

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SOUTH AFRICA WINE RESEARCH 2024