Grape Research in India -A Review

The commercial grape cultivation in India is about 60 years old and mainly confined to cultivation of Vitis vinifera cultivars in the tropical and sub-tropical areas comprising of Maharashtra (Nasik, Solapur, Sangli and Pune districts), northern Karnataka (Bijapur, Belgaum, Kadappa, Bagalkot, districts), Andhra Pradesh (Rangareddy district) and Tamil Nadu. The vines remain ever growing as there is no cold induced dormancy of vines, and pruning the vines twice in a year while taking a single crop is the common practice. Research work carried out during the past few decades before the establishment of the National Research Centre for Grapes at Pune was conducted at various centres across India which did not focussed on the needs of the industry. It is since the inception of this Centre that a concerted effort has been made to study the actual constraints in grape production through dialogues with the growers and other stake holders and field visits, and resolve them through need based research. In this paper we have focussed on this need based research conducted in the last two decades or so which has made a difference to grape cultivation in the country.