cultivated wine grape. Vitis vinifera

Vitis vinifera is the most cultivated and economically important grape species. Grapes are not only consumed fresh but processed in making juice and wine. Though new cultivars of grapes have been developed over last few decades, their introduction into the market has been difficult. An existing cultivar can also be manipulated for a desirable trait by genetic manipulation, if gene information is available. V. vinifera is a diploid plant with 2n = 38 chromosomes. It has a small genome of about 500 Mb which makes genome analysis feasible in grapes. Large scale ESTs are already available for V. vinifera. There are two grape genomic sequencing endeavors. For one, the Instituto Agriario San Michele all'Adige has hired Myriad Genetics to perform WGS sequencing and deposited the contigs of a heterozygotic cultivar of the Pinot Noir grape in the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration. This is 7X coverage with the 454 technology used to generate 4X coverage of short reads for finishing. The other endeavor to determine the grape genome sequence is a multinational collaborative project on grapevine research with an aim to understand the grape biology, viticulture and enology. The multinational endeavor has decided to determine the sequence of Pinot Noir PN40024, a homozygotic cultivar at 12X coverage. All the sequence generated in this project are deposited in the Trace Archive. A draft genome sequence at 8x coverage has been produced. The WGS contigs will be positioned on the genetic map. This understanding will aid in the development of new grape cultivars that are high yielding, and disease and stress resistant. It will also help in the development of new vineyard and winery diagnostic tools.