Grapevine is a worldwide crop and it is also subject to global trade in wine, berries and grape vine plants. Various countries, including the countries of the European Union, emphasize the role of product origin designation and suitable methods are sought, able to capture distinct origins. One of the biological matrices that can theoretically be driven by individual vineyards’ conditions represents DNA methylation. Despite this interesting hypothesis, there is a lack of respective information. The aim of this work is to examine whether DNA methylation can be used to relate a sample to a given vineyard and to access a relationship between a DNA methylation pattern and different geographical origin of analysed samples. For this purpose, DNA methylation landscapes of samples from completely different climatic conditions presented by the Czech Republic (Central Europe) and Armenia (Southern Caucasus) were compared. Results of the Methylation Sensitive Amplified Polymorphism method confirm uniqueness of DNA methylation landscape for individual vineyards. Factually, DNA methylation diversity within vineyards of Merlot and Pinot Noir cultivars represent only 16% and 14% of the overall diversity registered for individual cultivars. On the contrary, different geographical location of the Czech and Armenian vineyards was identified as the strongest factor affecting diversity in DNA methylation landscapes (79.9% and 70.7% for Merlot and Pinot Noir plants, respectively).

A field survey conducted on asymptomatic grapevine propagation material from nurseries and symptomatic young grapevines throughout different regions of Algeria yielded a collection of 70 Phaeoacremonium-like isolates and three Cadophora-like isolates. Based on morphology and DNA sequence data of β-tubulin (tub2) and actin (act), five Phaeoacremonium species were identified including Phaeoacremonium minimum (22 isolates), P. venezuelense (19 isolates), P. parasiticum (17 isolates), P. australiense (8 isolates) and P. iranianum (4 isolates). The latter two species (P. australiense and P. iranianum) were reported for the first time in Algeria. Multi-locus phylogenetic analyses (ITS, tub2, tef1) and morphological features, allowed the description of the three isolates belonging to the genus Cadophora (WAMC34, WAMC117 and WAMC118) as a novel species, named Cadophora sabaouae sp. nov. Pathogenicity tests were conducted on grapevine cuttings cv. Cardinal. All the identified species were pathogenic on grapevine cuttings.

In this study, 30 genotypes of genus Pyrus (five European cultivars, 16 Asian cultivars, three rootstocks, four interspecific hybrids, one landrace cultivar from Czech Republic ('Krvavka'), Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge. and one intergeneric hybrid (Cydomalus)) were tested using AFLP markers. Twelve primer combinations generated a number of 1251 fragments of which 1064 were polymorphic with an average polymorphism of 85.3%. The dendrogram, created by using the UPGMA method, revealed a distinct genetic relationship between European and Asian pear groups. The intergeneric hybrid Cydomalus was separated in the cluster tree from both groups. The level of similarity coefficient between European and Asian pears was 0.75. Despite the fact that Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge was clustered in the European pear group, the average similarity coefficient between the European pear group and Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge (0.7704) was comparable to the similarity coefficient between the Asian pear group and Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge (0.768). Thus, the botanic species Pyrus betulaefolia Bunge can likely be considered as an intermediate genotype between European and Asian pears. The cultivar 'Talgarskaja Krasavica' (chance seedling of 'Forest Beauty'), which pomologically belongs to the European pear group was clustered together with the interspecific hybrid 'Wu Jiu Xinag' ('Ya Li' × 'Bartlett') which on the other hand belongs to the Asian pear group. Thus, due to its position in the dendrogram the cultivar 'Talgarskaja Krasavica' could be considered as an interspecific hybrid.