THE USE OF RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNAS TO FINGERPRINT APPLE GENOTYPES

Twenty-five accessions of apple, representing eight cultivars ('Golden Delicious', 'Delicious', 'Gala', 'Jonagold', 'Jonathan', 'Florina', 'Fior di Cassia', and 'Imperatore Dallago') have been characterized with Random Amplified Polymorphic DNAs (RAPD). The reliability of the method was tested by analyzing separate scions of the same clone and also by comparing different accessions of the same cultivar. Using two separate ten bp primers, it was possible to obtain a distinctive fingerprint for each of the cultivars. The method is simple, rapid and should provide a useful system for documenting the identity of clonal material.