Murcia, Spain's leading producer of table grapes with a volume of 185,000 tons, leads the country's genetic improvement and varietal development of this fruit through the work carried out by Murcia's Table Grape Technology and Research Society (ITUM) together with Murcia's Institute for Agrarian and Food Development (IMIDA).
“Years ago, producers in the Region of Murcia began growing table grapes using local varieties, which little by little gave way to foreign varieties. However, some of these varieties did not behave well, so a group of producing companies with the collaboration of Imida, which already had a grape genetic improvement program, decided in 2002 to create the ITUM to obtain new varieties of seedless table grapes,” stated researcher Manuel Tornel.
The in vitro culture laboratory of the Seedless Table Grape Group starts the process by making crosses in the flowering period before the grape flowers self-fertilize as they are hermaphrodites, Tornel detailed. “We carry outcrosses with seedless parents. We are forced to carry out in vitro culture to obtain hybrid seedlings. These hybrids are then taken to the field where we annually plant 12,000 to 15,000 hybrids and submit them to a first evaluation. A maximum of 15 of these hybrids go to a second selection phase for agronomic study and another 12 plants can remain as new mothers.”
"Those plants that pass to the agronomic study are grafted and placed in a more commercial plantation framework of around 1,000 plants per hectare. We then conduct a study of their characteristics to fine-tune the cultivation techniques that are going to be carried out on that grape,” the researcher added.
"At present, we have 18 varieties registered by the Itum-Imida program. It should be noted that they are all crunchy, have a muscat or neutral flavor and, as a great advantage, 2 of them have genes that make them resistant to diseases, such as the powdery mildew."
There are 6,400 hectares of grape crops in the Region of Murcia, 1,084 of which are grapes belonging to the Itum-Imida project. "The Itum-Imida varieties have been exported to countries such as Chile, Peru, Brazil, Namibia, and Australia, where they don't compete with the companies that developed the project," Tornel highlighted.
“We hope that more of the upcoming varieties we are investigating will have disease-resistant genes. That would allow the existing number of cultivated hectares in Murcia to be healthy, sustainable, and have less of an environmental impact,” he stated.
Source: agrodiario.com
The Link LonkAugust 31, 2020 at 06:49PM
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"At present, we have 18 table grape varieties registered by the Itum-Imida program" - FreshPlaza.com
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