RAPD ANALYSIS OF ISOLATED MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA REVEALS HETEROGENEITY IN ELITE WILD ABORTIVE (WA) CYTOPLASM IN RICE

RAPD profiles were generated using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) isolated from two cytoplasmic male-sterile lines, two restorer lines and four m aintainer lines of rice. Of the 40 primers tested, 25 generated consis tent and easily scoreable patterns that were used for the computation of pairwise similarities as well as UPGMA analyses, The different line s of rice, including lines IR58025A and IR62829A that contained the sa me wild abortive (WA) cytoplasm, were distinguishable on the basis of RAPD profiles. These latter two lines were not distinguishable from ea ch other by mtDNA RFLP analyses with as many as 16 mtDNA probes. The d ata illustrate the utility of the RAPD technique as a powerful tool fo r distinguishing different cytoplasms that by other techniques appear to be similar. To our knowledge, this is the first report wherein RAPD profiles obtained with isolated mtDNA templates enable the distinctio n between two or more types of cytoplasms in rice.