Résumé
EU Council Regulation No. 1467/94 of 20 June 1994 aimed at the coordination of the conservation, characterization, collection and sustainable utilization of genetic resources in agriculture. The intention was to bring together the work undertaken in the Member States and to enable it to benefit the needs of the Community, in line with the Common Agricultural Policy and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The EU project GENRES CT96 No. 81 “European Network for Grapevine Genetic Resources Conservation and Characterization” ran from 1 March 1997 to 28 February 2002. Because more time was needed to finish the project work, a prolongation until 30 September 2002 was approved by the European Commission. The objectives of the project were: (1) the establishment of a European Vitis Database, (2) the selection of appropriate primary and secondary descriptors for (3) morphological description and the evaluation of agronomic traits, mainly of old and long-neglected grapevine varieties and (4) the utilization of simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker analysis for variety identification. Nineteen partners from 14 countries participated: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland (Table 1). Countries in bold are those for which Bioversity (formerly known as IPGRI, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute), provided funds to help them to take part in the project.