Genetic characterization of Albanian grapevine cultivars by microsatellite markers

A recently restored ampelographic collection of Albanian grapevine accessions has been submitted to genetic profiling with eleven nuclear microsatellite markers, widely used in other studies. Microsatellite profiling resulted in 28 single profiles for 29 accessions. Two cultivars, Shesh I bardhe and Pucalla, were found to be synonyms. Genetic profiles of Albanian cultivars were compared at 8 microsatellite loci to 29 most commonly cultivated Greek cultivars. Albanian cultivars were found to be more closely related to Greek cultivars from Peloponnese. One Greek cultivar named Dempina was found to be genetically close to two Albanian cultivars Debina teki and Debina kala, which are homonyms Another cultivar, known as Toska or Sinambel displayed a tri-allelic profile at 5 loci over 10 analysed loci. Such a high number of tri-allelic loci found in one individual favours the hypothesis of triploidy but the chimerism hypothesis cannot be excluded without further work.