UTILITY OF RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD) MARKERS FOR LINKAGE MAPPING IN TURKISH RED PINE (PINUS-BRUTIA TEN)

We have applied the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker sys tem to estimate linkage relationships in Pinus brutia TEN.. We used DN A samples from 30 haploid seed megagametophytes from each of 4 mother trees. Ninety-five 10-base oligonucleotide primers were evaluated and 34 revealed at least one polymorphic RAPD locus. The number of segrega ting RAPD loci per polymorphic primer varied from 2.32 to 3.25, but wh en segregating loci per tested primer was considered it was low, rangi ng on the average, from 0.28 in tree 4 to 0.59 in tree 1. Based on the RAPD loci segregating in 1:1 ratio, genetic Linkage groups formed fro m 6 for genotype-l (total map distance=163.91 cM) to 13 for genotype-3 (total map distance=511.2 cM). It was also found that a number of seg regating loci in all 4 genotypes (ranging from 14 to 21) could not be assigned into any of the constructed linkage groups. It was difficult to compare linkage groups among the genotypes since most of RAPD loci segregating in one genotype were not found in others. Thus, the linkag e map provided very little information on the genomic organization of RAPD markers at the species level. The utility of RAPD markers in fore st genetics is also discussed in the paper.