ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes North American grape culture, and for muscadine grapes, reviews the native and production ranges, propagation techniques, and relationships between vine growth and insects. The goals for entomology in muscadine grape production are: the retention of natural resistance to insect attack through augmentation of breeding programs with host plant resistance to insects, and the development of chemical controls for pernicious insect pests that do not disrupt the biological control agents of minor pests. The muscadine grape, V. rotundifolia, is a native North American species which is propagated by ripe soft wood cuttings for fruit production in the southern US from Delaware to Florida and west to Kansas and Mexico. Wild muscadine grapes were harvested by early Americans for fresh fruit, and early cultivars were selected from wild plants. Adults feed heavily on ripened fruit, including the berries of muscadine grapes.
