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 most representative 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 Li index, ranged from 0 – 0.3. Our results highlight cases of different cultivars displaying the same AFLP profile and similar morphological characteristics, proving the occurrence of synonyms in Iranian germplasm. Combining AFLP results and morphological descriptions, two cases of wrong attribution were also observed: ‘Saghal Solian-2’ was renamed ‘Mosli’; and ‘Khalili Qermez’ was now called ‘Khalili Sefid’. Morphological characterisation, conducted using the IPGRI descriptors, showed large variability among the accessions analysed, mainly in young shoot and leaf colour, and in bunch size. Although synonyms were detected, and genomic similarities were verified, genetic differences and the richness observed in Iranian grapevine germplasm were not high, in contrast with their morphological characteristics. We hypothesise that many Iranian morphotypes have been derived from mutation events in a few ancient genotypes; however, the system of selection may result in the biodiversity of Iranian grapevine being endangered. For this reason, our molecular and morphological characterisation will help in the development of conservation plans and in the re-organisation of local germplasm collections.