Brassica napus plants, artificially synthesized through somatic hybrid
ization of B. oleracea and B campestris protoplasts, were analyzed by
oligonucleotide fingerprinting. While the fingerprint patterns of the
different hybrid plants looked very much alike, they did not simply re
present a combination of the parental patterns. Instead, the absence o
f parental bands as well as the presence of new bands suggest that eli
mination and/or rearrangements occurred during or after the fusion of
the two genomes. The fingerprints of individual F1 progeny plants of s
elfed hybrids did not detect major changes. Thus, once formed, the art
ifically resynthesized amphidiploid B. napus genome appears to be stab
le. Taken together, our experiments demonstrate the usefulness of olig
onucleotide fingerprinting for the characterization of artificial hybr
ids in the genus Brassica.