DNA fingerprinting of strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) cultivars using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers

Forty-one of the major strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) cultivars grown in the United States and Canada were examined for RAPD (randomly amplified polymorphic DNA) marker polymorphisms using 10mer primers (>50% GC content). A set of 10 primers produced 15 polymorphic fragments ranging in size between 450 and 1200 bp, which were more than sufficient to distinguish among all tested cultivars. Ten of the markers derived from seven primers were absolutely required for distinguishing the cultivars. A DNA fingerprinting table was constructed based on these results. In addition, similarity coefficients were calculated based on RAPD marker data and a dendogram was constructed using the unweighted pair group method of arithmetic averages (UPGMA). These results were compared with known pedigree data for the cultivars. Our results demonstrate that RAPD markers can be used effectively for strawberry cultivar identification.