The ancient civilisations of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, Persians and Phoenicians were probably already involved in the deliberate cultivation of plants and therefore also grape varieties based on wild vines. It had probably been known for a very long time that new varieties could be obtained by sowing seeds.
It is highly likely that the Persians and later the Arbans had already deliberately bred large-berried and seedless table grapes in the early Middle Ages, which spread throughout the Mediterranean region as far as Spain. Modern breeding as a deliberate, manually induced crossing of two parent varieties with the targeted use of paternal pollen probably only began in Christian Europe with the start of botanical systematics, for which Carl von Linné (1707-1778) and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) laid the scientific foundations.
Start of targeted breeding activities
From the first third of the 19th century, new grape varieties were created through targeted activities such as seed sowing or cross-breeding, particularly in the greenhouses of England. These included, for example, the table grape varieties Foster's White Seedling and Lady Downe's Seedling. In the middle of the 19th century, many new varieties such as Madeleine Royale and Madeleine Angevine were also created in France, particularly in the nurseries of Anger (Loire).
Professional cross-breeding began on a larger scale in the second third of the 19th century. The phylloxera and mildew catastrophe in France from the 1870s onwards led to a real boom in new varieties of fungus-resistant hybrids and phylloxera-resistant rootstocks. Georges Couderc (1850-1928), Albert Seibel (1844-1936) and the Seyve-Villard vineyard were important in terms of quantity. Following the great success of Müller-Thurgau, many new varieties were also created in Germany after the First World War. These included Bacchus, Domina, Dornfelder, Dunkelfelder, Huxelrebe, Kerner, Scheurebe and Siegerrebe.
The best-known breeders of grape varieties and rootstocks include François Baco, Helmut Becker, Carl Börner, Albert Seibel and Fritz Zweigelt (a comprehensive list can be found under the heading New Breeding ).
Breeding goals
The general aim of breeding in modern viticulture is to produce grape varieties with certain positive, desirable characteristics and traits. New grape varieties with better or, in some cases, completely new characteristics can only be produced by generative (sexual) breeding: two grape varieties with desirable parental characteristics are crossed with each other and the plants that best correspond to the desired ideal variety are selected from the adult seedlings.
In maintenance breeding, existing stocks of varieties with degenerative or viral symptoms are improved by selecting the most vigorous, most fertile and healthiest vines. These healthy and virus-free individual vines are then propagated en masse by vegetative (asexual) means, while the degenerated, unfertile vines in the vineyard are eliminated and replaced by the multiplied healthy clones of top quality (see under clone selection).
The best plant with the desired characteristics is selected and then propagated vegetatively in vine nurseries using cuttings. Due to the extremely pronounced heterozygosity of the grapevine, plants propagated by sowing seeds split again and therefore no longer have the selected characteristics of the mother plant. Therefore, the vegetative form is the only way to obtain a selected variety type.
The Community Plant Variety Office ( CPVO ) established by the EU or the national authorities are responsible for granting variety protection for newly bred grape varieties or clones. There are essentially four different breeding strategies, some of which are used in combination. These are cross breeding, selection breeding, mutation breeding and maintenance breeding.
Cross breeding
This refers to the breeding of new grape varieties by crossing at least two and sometimes several parent varieties by crossing a cross product again (possibly several times). This is generative (sexual) propagation. The aforementioned heterozygosity of the vine means that the offspring also have different characteristics from the parents. This positive phenomenon is called the heterosis effect. As a rule, the parents are different varieties, which avoids negative inbreeding effects. The seeds intended for sowing ripen in the...
