In Italy the spread of chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) has favored the evolution of a rich varietal heritage in different pedoclimatic areas. Conservation of this wide germplasm is very important to save valuable genotypes, because they may retain special adaptative and technological traits and so meet the demands of the market that nowadays requires, more and more, typical products of high quality. The preservation and valorization of this heritage can be achieved through a multidisciplinary approach. Genetic, morphologic, chemical and sensory analyses allow to define the properties and the characteristics of each chestnut cultivar and can be helpful in choosing the most proper uses of the nuts. In this work, we describe our experience on chestnut characterization aimed to select plant material to be exploited in the different growing areas and show how a multidisciplinary approach greatly improves the efficacy of the characterization and the reliability of the evaluation of the germplasm. The final aim is to provide growers with selected plant material able to yield nuts suitable for the fresh market or for processing and offer to consumers high quality products from vocated areas.

The final characteristics of a wine are strongly influenced by must varietal composition. Further, wine quality and value can be heavily modified if grape varieties other than those expected/allowed are used, especially in the case of monovarietal wines. ‘Moscato bianco’, which is one of the main grape varieties grown in Piedmont (northwestern Italy), is used for the production of two renowned monovarietal sparkling wines: Asti Spumante and Moscato d’Asti. Here, the genetic traceability of these wines was assessed using a simple sequence repeat (SSR or microsatellite) DNA-based method. Must and wine samples from two local wineries were collected at different winemaking steps: after grape crushing and pressing, without the skins (must sample 1, M1); after static clarification or flotation (M2); halfway through fermentation (M3); and finished wines. A DNA extraction protocol was developed, and samples were analysed using a set of 9 nuclear (nSSR) and 7 chloroplast (cpSSR) markers. The application of nSSR markers was successful for M1 and M2, but was inadequate for M3 and wines. CpSSR gave better results as amplifications were achieved using DNA extracted from M1, M2 and wines, despite the lack of amplification in M3. Furthermore, the amplified cpSSR loci showed high polymorphism, allowing the identification of 5 distinct chlorotypes among 7 muscat-flavoured and 2 non-aromatic grapevines. Altogether, these results suggest that this technique could be extended to wine quality and authenticity control, as well as origin protection.