Nucleic acid scanning techniques distinguish closely related cultivars of poinsettia

DNA amplification fingerprinting (DAF) was used to evaluate the genetic rel ationships among 11 cultivars of poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima Willd.). Amplification was with 10 octamer oligonucleotide primers that generated 3 36 DNA bands. Thirty-one percent of the bands were polymorphic and distingu ished among cultivars. Genetic relationships were evaluated by cluster anal ysis, and the resulting dendrogram closely agreed with published cultivar r elationships. Arbitrary signatures from amplification profiles (ASAP) were further used to characterize two cultivars, 'Nutcracker Red' and 'Peterstar Red', that were previously found to be genetically and morphologically sim ilar, as well as five cultivars in the "Freedom" series. The DAF products g enerated with arbitrary octamer primers were reamplified with mini-hairpin decamer primers in these experiments. The ASAP profiles were complex and yi elded a total of 231 bands, 38% of which were polymorphic and capable of di stinguishing each Freedom cultivar. Five of the eight primer combinations d istinguished 'Nutcracker Red' from 'Peterstar Red'. Thus, closely related c ultivars of poinsettia can be separated using new and improved molecular fi ngerprinting protocols.