The present attempt to establish a comprehensive and
harmonized list of grapevine varieties authorized in Europe
represents the contribution of the group of experts within
the project GrapeGen06. In no case is this work intended
to substitute for administrative initiatives in progress and
has the sole aim to make available to professionals a usable
document. To the involved people, the list presented
here is a tool that will facilitate the implementation of the
European regulations on grapevine. It also offers a panorama
of the European grapevine genetic potential, thus
enabling to specify whose responsibilities are involved
and how much efforts should be produced to plan a sound
genetic resources protection and further breeding. In this
respect it is worth to underline the fact that over half of the varieties are registered in only one Member State. This
opens new perspectives emphasizing the importance of
European inter-institute cooperation for sharing conservation
and breeding responsibilities.
Considering the natural evolution of the national catalogues of grape varieties in each Member State and the
progress in grape variety identification, it would be necessary to consider an annual update of this European harmonized
catalogue.
