Differences in rooting ability between wild and cultivated Vitis vinifera

Vegetative propagation methods involve using mature plant material to produce new plants. It probably contributed to the key transition for early humans from a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to settled agricultural communities based on cultivating their plant resources. The domestication of the Eurasian grapevine can be described as a long-term process of selection of suitable genotypes followed by their vegetative propagation. Vegetative propagation through cuttings is one of the earliest known agricultural practices, and historical sources substantiate its widespread use for the cultivation of the Eurasian grapevine. To test whether domestication has had an effect on the grapevine’s capacity for rooting and therefore vegetative propagation, 1,061 grapevine cuttings from nine different accessions were studied for 200 days in two different experimental sites in Georgia. Specifically, the vegetative propagation properties of 485 cuttings of the wild vine (Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris) were compared with 576 cuttings of the domesticated vine (Vitis vinifera subsp. sativa). Subspecies sativa showed a higher rooting ability than subspecies sylvestris. The domesticated plant also showed a more developed root system characterised by a greater number of first- and second-order roots. Moreover, the domesticated cuttings showed a larger single leaf area, whereas wild cuttings produced more nodes and leaves. The total leaf area for the two subspecies was similar. We propose that the greater rooting ability of the subspecies sativa was likely a key character that was selected for during the domestication process, whether more or less consciously. These results provide concrete support for the hypothesis that asexual reproduction plays an important role in the domestication process.