Polymorphism and discrimination capacity of randomly amplified polymorphicmarkers in an olive germplasm bank

Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was performed on the main Mediterranean cultivars of olive (Olea europaea L.) from the Germplasm Bank of the Centro de Investigacion y Formacion Agraria "Alameda del Obispo" in Cordoba, Spain, One hundred and ninety reproducible amplification fragment s were identified using 46 random primers followed by agarose gel electroph oresis, Some 63.2% of the amplification products were polymorphic, with an average of 2.6 RAPD markers obtained for each printer. The combination of p olymorphic markers resulted in 244 banding patterns. The high degree of pol ymorphism detected made identification of all the cultivars (51) possible b y combining the RAPD banding patterns of just only four primers: OPA-01, OP K-08, OPX-01, and OPX-03, Cultivar-specific RAPD markers and banding patter ns mere also found, A dendrogram based on unweighted pair-group method clus ter analysis was constructed using a similarity matrix derived from the RAP D amplification products generated by the 46 primers. Three major groups of cultivars could be distinguished hy RAPD analysis: I) cultivars from east and northeast Spain, 2) Turkish, Syrian, and Tunisian cultivars, and 3) the majority of common olive cultivars in Spain, The dendrogram thus showed a good correlation between the banding: patterns of olive cultivars and their geographic origin. A higher level of polymorphism was observed when polyac rylamide gel electrophoresis was used to separate the amplification product s, Thus, adequate use of RAPD technology offers a valuable tool to distingu ish between olive cultivars.