Grape breeding

General Fruit Growing
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Thak you anyway for your interest… which varieties have you got?

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You can see it on my thread:

My small fruit tree orchard - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit

Wine grapes (53):

Touriga nacional
Castelão
Touriga Franca
Aragonês
Cabernet Sauvignon
Alicante Bouchet

Table Grapes (28):

Moscatel Graudo
Moscatel
Alphonse Lavale
Cardinal
Sulima
Pizutello Nero
Hamburgo
Don Mariano
Red Globe

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23

Congratulations! I don’t know many of your varieties … but it will be a good opportunity to calmly look at your list in the next few days which seems very interesting … :slight_smile: I have many muscats (many single specimens), - some fruit vines -, and the bulk of the vineyard (about 50 plants) is cultivated with arneis. Finally five Viognier, and some plants of the heart given to me by an old granny and which are not even in the national registers :slight_smile:

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Some of them are portuguese varieties…

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Grape is incredible… how much biodiversity and
heterozygosity and “secret” genetic caracters it has! And more, it is so deeply radicated in uman history, beliefs, traditions… it has some kind of magic!

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And the leaves can be used too… :blush:

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27

I knok greek Dolmades, but I never use my leafs because I have to make
phytosanitary treatments (expecially in the place I live)…

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Me too… but there are some varieties that don’t nead treatment. We call it “americana”. I want to have some few to harvest leaves.

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I have some hybrids viniferaxamerican grapes (that don’t receive treatments) but I not sure that it can be used for dolmedes :slight_smile: It’s better go to some greek Island and have sealife and food for some years after this awful situation we’re living. Anyway as hybrids I have Norton, Philipp, Fragola bianca, Fragola nera, Solaris, Bronner, POloskei Muskotali and Muscat blue… they don’t receive treatments. What else can be done with leafs?

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You can eat them on salads, making rools, juice…

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31

I will surely taste them. If you are looking for a grape from which take leafs i suggest You to take an hybrid rootstock like so4 or Kober 5bb, it will only make leafs, very similar to vinifera ones and very resistant to plant diseases… some leafs of some hybribs are very fleshy and I suppose that the in mounth the sensation wouldn’t be as delicate as it is in vinifera leafs…

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That is chinese to me… :grin:

How can i get those?

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Muscat is awesome
Have any hybrid seeds to share or trade?

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No seeds sorry… (I usually grow seeds after pollination and fruit maturation, for my crossing attempts). But I can trade muscat cuttings… I’m looking for some american vitis acerifolia cuttings…

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If you want naturally pollinated seeds (from a vineyard with many different species) I can send you tons… but I hold for myself deliberate crossing seeds…

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How does pollination work when crossing grapes?
And how do you prevent the flowers from pollinating themselves?

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You have to evirate the flower (taking away stamens) before it loses Calyptra to prevent “cleistogamia”, but not too early, otherwise ovarium won’t be ready. After you pollinate with wanted “father” you put a paperbag on the cluster to prevent natural pollination… when cluster arrives to fruit set you change paperbag with a netbag to keep birds far from clusters!

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38

Luca has more experiance than me.

I looked into grapes a lot around a year ago.

What i remember
Most modern grapes are hermafrodite. So the flowers have both the female and male part.
You pick off the male part with tweezers. To only leave the female part. Than you bag it to avoid insects polinating it. On another cluster you leave the male parts and bag the cluster. (usualy bag twice the male(hermafrodite) clusters than tweezered de-maled clusters)

You check daylie. Once you see the female parts of the de-maled clusters open. You search for a bagged male(hermafrodite) cluster that is flowering and cut it off completly. You add this to the female (de-maled) cluster in the bag. And shake a bit.

There is also an “easymode” Some of the older varieties are pure male or female. The males are almost imposible to find (although SO4 is an example) But some of the old females have good enough fruits that people don’t care about the need for cross polination (the advantage of hermafrodite grapes is self pollination and usualy better fruitset)
For these pure females, you only have to bag them and bag a male/hermafrodite other variety grape. So no tweezers needed.
Some breeders build up a collection of these pure females for easy further breeding projects.

There are unfortunatly also hermafrodite grapes that have weak pollen. And also grapes that set small berry’s without pollination. So grape breeding is not always as easy as it seems. Especially if you want to be 100% sure of the parants.

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Can be not so easy to understand… moreover if you evirate cluster too soon you have problems in developing of female part. Non direct way to understand when female part is ready is to look at the clusters of the same plant… when 1st is flovering the one beside is nearly ready. Nothing can assure you that a part of the seeds will come from self pollination… I’ll send you a n old video (very niece also for the historical aspect)…

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Just the greatest problem… I’d add the fact that not always the pollen you want is ready when the female cluster is ready… Another problem is that ages of selection by mankind have depleted gentic variancy (even if grape is still one of the most “heterozygous” fruit…), so… how many secret flavors are still hidden over there? Which ancestors can we choose to reveal a new (or ancient) aspect still unknown or no more known? This fascinates me…