VitisDB is a tool designed for who work in the wine world and not only, even Winelover can discover the differences between varieties with careful details on the history and diffusion, as well as navigating the names used for plants and wines from them. The 'University of Pisa creates VitisDB is an online database that describes the most common grape varieties in Italy, paying attention to quality and production characteristics of grape varieties.
"With an estimated number of 2,300 vines, Italy is one of the richest countries in biodiversity wine - explains Claudio D'Onofrio-a researcher at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Food and agri-environment of ' University of Pisa and database administrator - With our project, we wanted to create a tool to support the work of characterization and recovery of grape varieties conducted within the regional and national level, at the same time is a "map" of the vines available to all. "
Why Vitis DB? The 'varietal identification is critical to the use and marketing of propagating material of agricultural plants. Viticulture in particular is an area where the varieties spread rapidly and thus the identification variety is an essential tool to recover native varieties and conservation "biodiversity" of vegetables.
The availability of a practical objective is to identify the varieties to meet:
-Need to control the quality of nursery productions and legal protection of new selections.
-Modern marketing vine and wine
-Solving numerous cases of homonymy and synonymy for the work of recovery and preservation of local germplasm.
"The vine is a very ancient culture and centuries have been coined many synonyms and homonyms to indicate the different varieties - adds D'Onofrio - Thanks interactivity with users, the database indicates beside the official name of all variants used to indicate the the same plant. " It turns out that Sangiovese, Brunello and Morellino all belong to the same varieties (Sangiovese fact) - and that such Ciliegiolo and Morellino bream, previously regarded as synonyms of the Sangiovese grape, are actually the names wrong.
VitisDB usage levels What makes it even more interesting and useful the database is to have multiple levels of accessibility: VitisDB has been designed so that it can be implemented by scholars from universities, institutes and research centers. They can access the site to enter their data a user can also redere available their data and the units associated with the project to carry out studies and comparisons before publishing them.
Finally, there is the layer visible to the public that allows you to browse through the variety of vines, to discover the scientific details and curiosities
Here are the projects and funding that made possible VitisDB
2007/2008: Project "Implementation of the application to a database of vines for wine grapes in Tuscany" funded "ColleMassari SpA"; Partner: Department of Cultivation and Protection of Wood Species "G. Scaramuzzi ", University of Pisa
2008/2010: Project "Implementation of the application for the Database Viticolo Italian" funded by "Fondazione socio-cultural Montecucco" Partner: Department of Cultivation and Protection of Wood Species "G. Scaramuzzi ", University of Pisa.
2011/2013: Project AGER No. 2010-2014 "An Italian wine database, for multi-disciplinary approach to knowledge and the enhancement of regional genotypes", funded by the "Group Savings Banks Foundations of the provinces Lombard" Project Partners: University of University of Turin, Arboree (leader), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, CNR, Institute of Plant Virology UOS Grugliasco (TO); Studies University of Pisa, Department of Cultivation and Defense of Wood Species "G. Scaramuzzi ", University of Foggia, Department of Agro-Environmental Sciences, Chemistry and Plant Protection, University of Palermo, Arboree.
For more information www.vitisdb.it
Photo: vinibuonid'Italia
