Technical Yearbook 2024

OCTOBER

The grapevine collection at ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij By Phyllis Burger

The history of a public grapevine cultivar collection can be traced back to Prof. A.I. Perold, the well-known “father” of Pinotage, who wore many different hats during his career as one of the pioneers in modernising the South African grape industry. He was appointed to head a government viticultural research station on Bellevue, a small farm in Paarl, in 1910 after one of his extensive study trips to Europe. Perold established a wine and table grape collection on Bellevue and imported many cultivars to extend this collection. One of these is Barlinka, which, for a long time, was a stalwart of the table grape industry. It was discovered

in Algeria and imported by Perold in 1910. Over the years this collection was extended under curatorship of different government institutions and is currently housed at the ARC Nietvoorbij farm in Stellenbosch. This collection includes not only wine, table and raisin grape cultivars, but also rootstocks and some other Vitis species and other members of the Vitaceae family. The current extent of the genebank Around 950 wine, table, and raisin grape cultivars are maintained in field blocks. This number includes cultivars imported under different names and often from different

FIGURE 1. Mutations that occurred spontaneously in South Africa. Cinsaut Gris, Cinsaut Blanc, Sémillon Gris (all colour mutations) and “Tamatie Frans” (a Palomino berry shape mutation).

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TECHNICAL YEARBOOK 2024