CHARACTERIZATION OF PINEAPPLE GERMPLASM (ANANAS SPP) BY MEAN AFLPs

Forty accessions of pineapple (Ananas spp), were evaluated using AFLPs (Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism). Accessions were collected from the Collection of the Campo Experimental del Papaloapan, Veracruz. The main objective was to determine the level of polymorphism within accessions, to characterize them and to detect duplicity of accessions inside of the collection. The primers combination Mse +CAT with EcoRI + ACA for selective amplification produced a total of 100 bands, 95% of these were polymorphic. We did not detect duplicity within accessions inside the collection except to Hawaii 4 and Hawaii 9 accessions that had equal similarity coefficients. The cluster generated showed that Ananas comosus accessions were grouped together and were separated from the wild species. Variation can be due to species self incompatibility, environmental factors, mutation rate and somaclonal variation.
The use of Biochemical markers in pineapple, such as isozymes was previously used by Dewald et al. (1992), and Aradhya et al. (1994). The use of molecular markers, such as RFLP were reported by Duval et al. (2001). With the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), numerous molecular technologies have been developed. The objective of this study was to utilize Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) in the pineapple collection of the Campo Experimental del Papaloapan, Veracruz, to determine the level of polymorphism within accessions, to characterize them and to detect duplicity of accessions inside of the collection.