ABSTRACTtechniques used to characterize wheat cultivars (Vaccino et al., 1993) and assess genetic diversity (Kim andCharacterization of germplasm by means of DNA fingerprinting Ward, 1997; Paull et al., 1998 Tautz and Renz, 1984) and AFLP (Vos et al., 1995).cation Matrix that allowed the discrimination of the 105 cultivars.The SSR technique gained rapid acceptability be-
Data obtained from SSR markers were complemented by informationcause of its codominant nature, reproducibility, and high derived from AFLPs. Molecular data were used to quantify genetic information content (De Loose and Gheysen, 1995). than RFLP were found between bread wheat cultivars released in the 1970sand prompted the development of more than 400 SSR 1998; Stephenson et al., 1998). The first SSR markers available were used to characterize eight European cultivars (Devos et al., 1995) and 11 Canadian cultivars I dentification and registration of bread wheat culti-(Lee et al., 1995) of wheat bread. In a more comprehenvars is mainly based on morphologic and physiologic sive study of 40 European bread wheat cultivars using characteristics. Even though these descriptors are use-23 SSR, Plaschke et al. (1995) concluded that a relative ful, they are limited in number and may be affected by small number of SSR was sufficient to discriminate this environmental factors. Molecular markers are a useful set of cultivars. complement to morphological and physiological characThe AFLP technique combines the RFLP reliability terization of cultivars because they are plentiful, indewith the power of PCR to amplify simultaneously many pendent of tissue or environmental effects, and allow restriction fragments (Vos et al., 1995). This technique cultivar identification early in plant development. Mowas used successfully to evaluate genetic diversity and lecular characterization of cultivars is also useful to evalgenetic relationships in wheat (Salamini et al., 1997; uate potential genetic erosion, defined here as a reduc- Barrett and Kidwell, 1998;Domini et al., 2000), bean tion of genetic diversity in time.(Phaseolus vulgaris L.) (Tohme et al., 1996), rice (MacRestriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP, kill et al., 1996;Virk et al., 2000), tea (Camellia sinensis Bostein et al., 1980) was one of the first DNA marker Kuntze) (Paul et al., 1997), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) (Qi and Lindhout, 1997), and soybean (Maughan et al., 1996).M.M. Manifesto, A.R.