ARI-516 is a multi-purpose grape variety with a musky flavour and is moderately resistant fungal diseases
Researchers at the Agarkar Research Institute (ARI) in Pune have developed a new hybrid variety of grape suitable for making a wide range of food products, including juice, raisin, jam and red wine.
“ARI-516 is a multi-purpose grape variety with a musky flavor and is moderately resistant fungal diseases. It is also an early maturing variety that yields about 16 to 20 tonnes per acre (40 to 50 tonnes per hectare),” said Sujata Tetali, the scientist who developed the variety by interbreeding of two species from the same genus – Catawba variety of Vitis labrusca and Beauty seedless variety of Vitis vinifera. The current average productivity of grapes in India is around 25 tonnes per hectare.
Tetali is a scientist at Genetics and Plant Breeding Group at ARI, an autonomous institution funded by the Department of Science and Technology. It developed the new variety in collaboration with the Maharashtra Association for Cultivation of Science. The work was recently published in the proceedings of the International Symposium on Grape Production and Processing.
