LEVEL OF HETEROZYGOSITY AND MODE OF INHERITANCE OF VARIABLE NUMBER OFTANDEM REPEAT LOCI IN AVOCADO

To estimate heterozygosity level in the avocado (Persea americana Mill .) genome, two types of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) marker s were used, Multilocus DNA fingerprints (DFPs) were analyzed on avoca do progeny resulting from either crosses or selling of cultivars. in f ive crosses, heterozygosity was 100%, while in two self-pollinated fam ilies, heterozygosity was 90% and 94%. Single locus, simple sequence r epeat (SSR) DNA markers were analyzed by typing 59 loci on five avocad o cultivars. Average heterozygosity varied from 0.50 to 0.66, while ge ne? diversity varied from 0.42 to 0.66. Heterozygosity varied from 38% to 70%. The percentage of fragments that exhibited Mendelian inherita nce was 62.5% to 85% (P < 0.05) for the DFP fragments and 85% for the SSR alleles.