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The Domaine de Vassal vine collection near Montpellier holds 2,300 different grape varieties.

Uncertainty hangs over one of the worlds largest and most important grapevine collections. The Domaine de Vassal vineyard, on Frances Mediterranean coast, houses a vast sweep of grape biodiversity that is essential to research and winegrowers in France and around the world.

The 138-year-old collection, managed by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), has been threatened with eviction, prompting a decision to relocate it.

That is raising concerns among scientists and winegrowers, because money to pay for the prospective move costing an estimated 4 million (US$5.4 million) has yet to be found. Even then, the sheer logistical complexity is such that relocation is likely to take years to complete, says INRA, and means that much of its research may be put on hold.

Dubbed the Louvre of grapevines by the local press, the vineyard near Marseillan, southwest of Montpellier, contains thousands of unique grape varieties. As well as having a conservation role in preserving genetic diversity, the collection is used for research and for breeding qualities such as flavour, colour, adaptation to specific regions and pathogen resistance. Several hundred samples from the Domaine de Vassal are used annually, mainly by other French labs, but also internationally.

The collection is of utmost value to the international grapevine genetics community, says Carole Meredith, an emeritus geneticist at the University of California, Davis. Although many countries have established collections of their own heritage grape varieties, the Vassal collection is among the oldest and best curated.

Meredith notes that much of her own research would have been impossible without this living library. Her labs previous studies of the vineyards specimens revealed Chardonnays somewhat undistinguished heritage one of its parent varieties is a noble Pinot, but the other is a Gouais, a grape long shunned as mediocre (J. Bowers etal. Science 285, 15621565; 1999).

The collection was started in 1876 by French researchers in response to a pest outbreak that saw the near-destruction of Europes vineyards. The outbreak was caused by accidental introduction of phylloxera an aphid that infests roots and kills the vine.

The vineyard was initially located near Montpellier, but moved to the Domaine de Vassal in 1949, where it expanded greatly. It now houses some 7,500 accessions from 47countries, representing 2,300 different grape varieties, including wild species, rootstocks, hybrids and mutants.

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Grapevine gene bank under threat

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