Activities of the Department

Grapevine has been always in the main focus of horticultural research in Hungary. The Department of Viticulture at the Faculty of Horticulture is dedicated solely to the grapevine, dealing with almost every aspects of related educational and research activities.

The Faculty Horticultural Science is unique in Hungary in the aspect that we are offering courses in the full scale of higher viticultural and enological education systems like bachelor, master and doctoral programs. The Department of Viticulture is responsible for viticulture related topics in these and other horticultural programs of the Faculty.

In our education emphasis is given both to practical and theoretical knowledge. Acquiring the theoretical knowledge of the subjects and the practical exercises presented is a good basis for our graduates to be worthy of being more than two thousand years old grape and wine culture of Hungary.

Our aim is to educate professionals who have a marketable degree, knowledge and experience, are able to synthesize and use the acquired knowledge, and to apply engineering approaches in everyday cultivation. They are familiar with the basics of grape growing, the grape varieties, the ecological factors influencing cultivation, the modern cultivation systems including precision viticulture, integrated and biological plant management.

As a result of the cross-breeding and clonal selection of grapevines, 8 state-certified grape varieties were produced at the Department. Further announcements of new resistant grape varieties are pending.

Our variety evaluation work is wide-ranging. Our longest series of data covers 25 crop years. We have developed a methodology for the cultivation evaluation of varieties and initiated the introduction and application of a large number of indicators. We have a molecular biology lab where SSR markers are routinely used for cultivar evaluation and pedigree analysis.

In the past few years our research activities has been focusing both to modern cultivation techniques and molecular biology research in grapevine. Research topics in the field of viticulture include physiologically optimized phytotechniques; management of trunk diseases; precision viticulture based on remote sensing measurements and their validation with field measurements. Next generation phenotyping methods are developed focusing on leaf and berry morphology. Research areas of our molecular biology lab include the research domestication processes of cultivated grapevine; the genomics of grapevine; and transcriptomics of the plant-pahtogen interactions of the black rot of grapevine.

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