Development of DNA fingerprinting keys for the identification of radish cultivars

Identification of cultivars is extremely important both for cultivation and breeding of crop plants. Cultivar identification based on morphological characteristics can be difficult and complicated. Polymerase chain reaction technologies, such as random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis, can readily and quickly identify cultivars using seeds and young leaves. Sixty individuals representing 7 radish cultivars were examined for RAPD marker polymorphism. Based on the polymorphism generated, 5 primers were selected, out of the 14 examined, to fingerprint the cultivars. The 5 primers produced a total of 52 fragments, 6 monomorphic and 46 polymorphic fragments, ranging in size from 206 to 2258 base pairs. A total and mean character difference matrix was calculated based on the RAPD data and a dendrogram was constructed using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA). Three DNA fingerprinting keys were developed for the 7 cultivars and 5 markers derived from 3 primers was the minimum required to distinguish cultivars. Results demonstrated that RAPD markers could be effectively used for the identification of radish cultivars.