We elucidate grapevine evolution and domestication histories with 3525 cultivated and wild accessions worldwide. In the Pleistocene, harsh climate drove the separation of wild grape ecotypes caused by continuous habitat fragmentation. Then, domestication occurred concurrently about 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus to yield table and wine grapevines. The Western Asia domesticates dispersed into Europe with early farmers, introgressed with ancient wild western ecotypes, and subsequently diversified along human migration trails into muscat and unique western wine grape ancestries by the late Neolithic. Analyses of domestication traits also reveal new insights into selection for berry palatability, hermaphroditism, muscat flavor, and berry skin color. These data demonstrate the role of the grapevines in the early inception of agriculture across Eurasia.

The genetic diversity and relationship between wild (Vitis vinifera L. subsp. sylvestris (Gmel.) Hegi and cultivated (V. vinifera L. subsp. vinifera) grapevine in the western Balkan region and Central Europe have not been studied together previously, although this area has a rich viticultural past. Here, we studied wild grapevine populations sampled from their natural habitats in several countries of the western Balkan region and Central Europe. Their genetic diversity and structure were compared to cultivars that are traditionally in use in this region. A sample set of 243 accessions was genotyped at 20 nuclear microsatellite loci, including 167 sylvestris and 76 diverse vinifera cultivars. The genetic diversity of the wild grapevines was lower than that of cultivars by all genetic parameters. Both hierarchical and nonhierarchical clustering methods differentiated two main groups, indicating clear separation between wild and cultivated vines but also revealed clear gene flow between the cultivated and wild gene pools through overlaps and admixed ancestry values in the graphs. There was greater affinity to the wild grapes in Central European cultivars than in Balkan cultivars. Fine arrangement of the structure among cultivated grapevines showed differentiation among Central European and Balkan cultivars. These results confirm the divergence of wild grapes from vinifera and highlight the “crossroad” role of the western Balkan peninsula in the broader context of European viticulture.

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Teleki rootstocks are used in grapevine-producing countries all over the world. They represent one of the largest groups of available rootstocks but their origin is still in dispute although they have been regarded as Vitis berlandieri × V. riparia hybrids. To investigate their possible origin, we amplified and sequenced three chloroplast regions, two non-coding spacers (trnL-F, trnS-G) and the trnL group I intron in a core collection of Teleki rootstocks representing widespread accessions and related wild North American grape species (V. berlandieri, V. riparia and V. rupestris). Concatenated sequence data coupled with microstructural changes discovered in the chloroplast regions provided data to trace the maternal ancestry of the Teleki lines. All chloroplast regions showed both nucleotide and length variation. Length mutations in the non-coding regions represented mostly simple sequence repeats of poly-A and -T stretches. These indel characters exhibited additional diversity comparable with the nucleotide diversity and increased resolution of the phylogenetic trees. We found that a group of Teleki accessions position together with the wild grape species V. riparia. Another group of Teleki rootstocks formed a sister group to the other North American species V. berlandieri. These clades had moderate support values, and they do not share ancestry with other accessions of Teleki rootstocks resolved with high support value in the V. riparia clade. It seems that Teleki-Kober 5BB and 125 AA accessions might have a V. berlandieri maternal background. We also found great differences within putative clones of Teleki 5C and Teleki-Kober 5BB suggesting that the selection of these accessions was performed on heterogenous or mislabeled plant material collectively maintained under these names. Keywords Grapevine . Group I intron . Non-coding spacer . North American wild Vitis species . trnL-trnF . trnS-trnG Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article