Armenia: historical origin of domesticated grapevine

Abstract

The Armenian Highlands are located on the northern border of Western Asia and stretch up to the Caucasus from the north. Throughout human history, the country has played an important role in connecting the civilizations of Europe and the Near East. A recent large-scale study about the dual domestication origin and evolution of grapes approved that in the Armenian Highlands human and grapevine stories are interlaced through centuries and roots of grapevine domestication are found deep in the Pleistocene, ending 11.5 thousand years ago. Until recently very little was known about the real magnitude of grape germplasm in Armenia. To address the gap in 2017, a nationwide program was launched to collect, conserve, and thoroughly characterize Armenian grapevine germplasm. Obtained results indicated that high genetic and morphological diversity as a source of novel alleles and genotypes is still safeguard in Armenia. A combination of genomic data, nuclear microsatellite markers and ampelography proved useful to determine the identity of collected samples recovered from old vineyards and home gardens, to analyze genetic relationships among two subspecies of Vitis vinifera, to demonstrated existence of gene flow between the wild and cultivated grapevines through overlaps and presence of admixed ancestry values.

DOI:

Publication date: November 18, 2024

Issue: OIV 2024

Type: Article

Authors

Kristine Margaryan1,2, Avag Harutyunyan3, Bella Grigoryan1, Aramais Mkrtchyan1, Frunz Harutyunyan1

1 Research Group of Plant Genomics, Institute of Molecular Biology of National Academy of Sciences RA, Yerevan 0014, Armenia
2 Research Institute of Biology, Yerevan State University, Yerevan 0025, Armenia
3 National Wine Center, Yerevan 0012, Armenia

Contact the author*

Tags

Full papers OIV 2024 | IVES Conference Series | OIV | OIV 2024

Citation

Related articles…

Chitosan from mushroom by-products: sustainable extraction process and winemaking application

Chitosan is a biopolymer industrially obtained from the deacetylation of chitin, the second most abundant polysaccharide on earth, after cellulose. It is extracted from various terrestrial and marine resources, including insects, grasshoppers, shrimps, crabs, lobsters, squids, and fungi. chitosan has a polycationic character due to the free amine groups along its chemical backbone, and depending on its deacetylation degree (DD) and molecular weight (MW), it shows variable properties that differ from those of other natural polysaccharides.

New ways of grape pomaces valorization: production of functional beverages or nutraceuticals

The wine industry generates each year 20 million tons of by-products. Among them grape pomaces represent a big part that can be considered as a source of potentially bioactive molecules such as polyphenols. Kombucha fermentation is an ancestral process which allow to increase the biological properties of tea by the action of a microbial consortium formed by yeasts and bacteria called scoby.

Impact assessment of the reverse osmosis technique in wine alcohol management

Wine authenticity and composition can be influenced by a range of membrane separation processes as reverse osmosis. In the context of climate change, the natural trend is to obtain wines with higher alcoholic concentration when classical winemaking methods are employed, and this may induce alteration of typicity of wines by masking the olfactory and taste properties. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of reverse osmosis techniques used for decrease of ethanol content on the stable isotopic ratios as markers for wine authenticity characteristics.

Phenolic composition and physicochemical analysis of wines made with the Syrah grape under double pruning in the Brazilian high-altitude Cerrado

This study explores the growing potential of vitiviniculture in Brazil’s Federal District, an emerging wine region marked by unique climatic conditions and innovative cultivation techniques.

About validation of a method for the determination of volatile compounds in spirituous beverages using contained ethanol as a reference substance

The paper proposes an algorithm for validating a modified internal standard method using ethyl alcohol contained in the test sample as a reference substance.