The thermal thresholds for seed germination identified in this study (T(b) and θ(50)) explained the differences in seed germination detected among populations. Under the two simulated IPCC scenarios, an altitude-related risk from climate warming is identified, with lowland populations being more threatened due to a compromised seed dormancy release and a narrowed seed germination window.

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The discovery of the Nuragic culture settlement\ud of Sa Osa, Cabras-Oristano, Sardinia, has made it possible\ud to investigate the domestication status of waterlogged uncharred\ud grape pips that were recovered from three wells\ud dating from the Middle and Late Bronze Age (ca.\ud 1350–1150 BC). Applying the stepwise linear discriminant\ud analysis method, a morphological comparison of archaeological\ud seeds and modern wild and cultivated Sardinian\ud grapes pips was performed to determine the similarities\ud between them. The results showed that the archaeological\ud seeds from the Middle Bronze Age have intermediate\ud morphological traits between modern wild and cultivated\ud grape pips from Sardinia. In contrast, the analyses performed\ud on the archaeological seeds from the Late Bronze\ud Age showed a high degree of similarity with the modern\ud cultivars in Sardinia. These results provide the first evidence\ud of primitive cultivated Vitis vinifera in Sardinia\ud during the Late Bronze Age (1286–1115 cal BC, 2r). This\ud evidence may support the hypothesis that Sardinia could\ud have been a secondary domestication centre of the grapevine,\ud due to the presence of ancient cultivars that still\ud exhibit the phenotypic characteristics of wild grapes

The identification of archaeological charred grape seeds is a difficult task due to the alteration of the morphological seeds shape. In archaeobotanical studies, for the correct discrimination between Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris and Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera grape seeds it is very important to understand the history and origin of the domesticated grapevine. In this work, different carbonisation experiments were carried out using a hearth to reproduce the same burning conditions that occurred in archaeological contexts. In addition, several carbonisation trials on modern wild and cultivated grape seeds were performed using a muffle furnace. For comparison with archaeological materials, modern grape seed samples were obtained using seven different temperatures of carbonisation ranging between 180 and 340ºC for 120 min. Analysing the grape seed size and shape by computer vision techniques, and applying the stepwise linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method, discrimination of the wild from the cultivated charred grape seeds was possible. An overall correct classification of 93.3% was achieved. Applying the same statistical procedure to compare modern charred with archaeological grape seeds, found in Sardinia and dating back to the Early Bronze Age (2017–1751 2σ cal. BC), allowed 75.0% of the cases to be identified as wild grape. The proposed method proved to be a useful and effective procedure in identifying, with high accuracy, the charred grape seeds found in archaeological sites. Moreover, it may be considered valid support for advances in the knowledge and comprehension of viticulture adoption and the grape domestication process. The same methodology may also be successful when applied to other plant remains, and provide important information about the history of domesticated plants.

Despite different breeding events, as well as the domestication phenomena which contributed to enrich the grape varietal heritage in Sardinia, many local varieties simply are the product of linguistic distorting due to the wide heterogeneity historic-cultural of the island. This phenomenon generated a great assortment of grape names, that, together with the huge real number of cultivars, is the cause of the incredible current grapevine Sardinian panorama. The goal of this article is to compare the published molecular data of 40 Sardinian autochthonous cultivars with the results achieved by the germplasm phenotypical characterization, on the basis of morpho-colorimetric features and Elliptic Fourier Descriptors (EFDs), measured by image analysis. Statistical classifiers were implemented to discriminate dissimilar seeds and carry out hypothetical synonymy groups to compare with those proposed on the basis of Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers. This work represents the first trial to validate a morpho-colorimetric characterization method by direct comparison with molecular data, proving that the 113 measured features of the germplasm resulted adequate to achieve a clear discrimination among the synonymy groups.