Fingerprinting of wine grape cultivars most commonly grown in Chile based on microsatellite markers

The Chilean wine industry has experienced a substantial modification during recent decades, favoring the planting of the so-called fine cultivars over the traditional ones, such as the cultivar País. On the other hand, the globalization of world markets has underlined the necessity of the certification of the genetic identity and purity of these cultivars, which until recently was only carried out by ampelographic methods. The direct analysis of DNA, including genomic repetitive sequences such as mini- and microsatellites, has permitted the development of new, powerful analytical methods, used as molecular markers for different purposes. In this paper, the genetic differentiation of some of the most commonly grown wine grape cultivars in Chile is presented. For this purpose, a set of 12 microsatellite markers were used to characterize 20 cultivars of red and white wine, producing a unique pattern of alleles or fingerprinting for each one. The expected heterozygosity (He) for each marker was quite high and diverse, ranging from 0.27 to 0.87 (average 0.70), as diverse as the number of alleles identified with each marker, from 4 for VVMD-25, VVMD-34 and VVS-29 to 10 for VVMD-28. The number of genotypes identified with each marker was from moderate, 4 in VVMD-34, to as high as 15 with VVMD-28. The combination of a small fraction of these markers (for example, VVMD-5 plus VVMD-28) allowed a complete identification of the cultivars. Considering the foregoing, a combination of SSR markers is proposed to be used in genetic certification of wine grapes