A new strategy for complete identification of 69 grapevine cultivars using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers

Abstract

DNA marker is a useful technique that has immense power in plant cultivar identification, which used to be the first preferential utility of any newly developed DNA marker technique. However, DNA markers have not been utilized well in the practice of plant identification, for which the bottleneck is no analysis methods available that can make the identification of plants with DNA marker easy, efficient and practical. We developed a novel approach called cultivar-identification-diagram (CID) strategy that can facilitate the utilization of DNA marker in the separation of plant individuals in a much better, efficient, practical, and referable manner. A CID was manually constructed with an intention of providing the polymorphic maker generated from each polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for sample separation. In this study, a total of 69 important grape cultivars cultivated in China were successfully separated with random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker through the CID analysis strategy, with only seven 11nt primers being employed. The utilization of the CID of these 69 grapevine cultivars was also verified by identification of two randomly chosen groups of cultivars among the 69. The main advantages of this identification strategy include fewer primers used, and separation of all the cultivars from each other by the corresponding primers marked in the right position on the CID. This grapevine CID can provide information to separate any grapevine cultivars among the 69 studied, which can definitely be of great help in grapevine cultivar identification for cultivar-right-protection and to the grapevine nursery industry in China. Key words: Grapevine, cultivar identification, new strategy.