ESTIMATION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN <em>EUCALYPTUS</em> <em>MICROTHECA</em> POPULATIONS WITH DOMINANT AFLP MARKERS

Abstract

The use of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) to study genetic variability in Eucalyptus microtheca (family Myrtaceae), a native Australian species grown in the arid and semi-arid zones, was demonstrated. Nine natural populations of E. microtheca were studied based on seed collected from widely-separated locations in Australia. Molecular markers were used to calculate similarity coefficients, which were then used for determining genetic distances between the populations. Based on genetic distances, a dendrogram was constructed. AFLP amplification of genomic DNA revealed the low level of variation among the different populations. Although the results were in general agreement with the conventional taxonomy, it also highlighted discrepancies in the classification.