Genetic Polymorphism between Tobacco Cultivar-groups Revealed by Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis

Tobacco (Nicotina tabacum) has been introduced to Thailand for hundreds of years. All tobaccos cultivated inthe country are legally separated to local (or early-imported) and imported cultivar groups. However, no methodcould precisely differentiate the two groups, especially from cured leaf samples. Amplified fragment lengthpolymorphism (AFLP) analysis was introduced to estimate genetic polymorphism of 19 tobacco cultivars grownin Thailand. Thirty-two selective primer-combinations were screened on the genomic DNA extracted from curedleaves. Three primer pairs were selected and resulted in 139 scorable AFLP fragments, of which 103 (74.1%)were polymorphic. Genetic relationship analysis revealed clustering patterns of tobacco samples generallyof the imported group, but significantly separated from Virginia type. Our finding therefore should be animportant knowledge for further research on cultivar identification and genetic improvement of tobaccos