The use of AFLP and morphological markers to study Iranian grapevine germplasm to avoid genetic erosion

Molecular and morphological analyses have been used to define and clarify the relationships among the 54 mostrepresentative grapevine cultivars in Iran. A total of 459 scorable AFLP fragments, across all the accessions analysed,were detected. Among these, 185 (40.3%) were polymorphic.Values of genetic diversity, calculated by the Nei and Liindex, ranged from 0 – 0.3. Our results highlight cases of different cultivars displaying the same AFLP profile andsimilar morphological characteristics, proving the occurrence of synonyms in Iranian germplasm. Combining AFLPresults and morphological descriptions, two cases of wrong attribution were also observed: ‘Saghal Solian-2’ wasrenamed ‘Mosli’; and ‘Khalili Qermez’ was now called ‘Khalili Sefid’. Morphological characterisation, conductedusing the IPGRI descriptors, showed large variability among the accessions analysed, mainly in young shoot and leafcolour, and in bunch size. Although synonyms were detected, and genomic similarities were verified, geneticdifferences and the richness observed in Iranian grapevine germplasm were not high, in contrast with theirmorphological characteristics. We hypothesise that many Iranian morphotypes have been derived from mutationevents in a few ancient genotypes; however, the system of selection may result in the biodiversity of Iraniangrapevine being endangered. For this reason, our molecular and morphological characterisation will help in thedevelopment of conservation plans and in the re-organisation of local germplasm collections.