Thirty-eight typical grapevine varieties of the Apulia region, Southern Italy, were genotyped at 6 microsatellite loci (VVS2, VVMD5, VVMD7, VrZAG47, VrZAG62, VrZAG79) with the aim to find synonymy and to confirm some pedigrees reported in literature. Microsatellites were amplified by PCR with P-33-ATP labelled primers and alleles separated by electrophoresis using 6 % acrylamide sequencing gels. The results confirm the high information level of the selected microsatellites. The number of alleles ranged from 7 to 11, producing up to 23 different combination patterns. The observed heterozygosity varied between 81.6 and 94.7 %, the discrimination power between 0.888 and 0.939, and the probability of identity was as low as 0.06-0.12. All cultivars of the study were discriminated from each other, except Regina (syn. Afuz Ali) and Mennavacca, which had the same profile. Finally, we were able to confirm the parentage of Victoria (Cardinal x Afuz Ali) and Matilde (Italia x Cardinal).
