First results of the European grapevine collections' collaborative network: validation of a standard eno-carpological phenotyping method

A standard protocol for phenotyping structural and compositional aspects of the grape berry has been adopted by 18 East and West European germplasm collections during one season by testing a total of 469 accessions, including reference cultivars as well as local and minor germplasm accessions of specific interest. The protocol consists in the collection of triplicates for 26 phenotypic traits, from biological samples, each formed by 10 berries collected from 9 representative bunches from every analyzed accessions. The protocol concatenates the data from measurements and acquisitions, with the objective to generate new derived variables, which are expressed with different units (%; content per kg of grapes, per berry, per g of tissue). For each variable, the Least Significant Differences (LSD), to contrast a pair of single accession mean values, and the Confidence Intervals (CI), to estimate each single accession mean value, were computed. The application of the protocol revealed satisfactory results with high accuracy and efficiency in estimation of phenotypic traits of each accession. The whole data set will be useful for researchers, breeders and viticulturists in yield evaluation of grapevine cultivars, as well as in comparative analyses of environment-variety interaction.