Massal selection

Massal selection consists of taking cuttings from the best vines of an old vineyard, often more than fifty years old, in order to reproduce the genetic diversity built up over time. It stands in contrast to clonal selection, which propagates a single individual to obtain identical plants. By preserving intra varietal heterogeneity, massal selection offers greater resilience to disease and climate change, at the cost of a higher sanitary risk.