Breeding of Vegetable, Spice and Tuber Crops

Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP)

• It is based on the PCR amplification of genomic restriction fragments generated by specific restriction enzymes and oligonucleotide adaptors of a few nucleotide bases.
• AFLP is a combination of RAPD and RFLP methods, but detects a ten fold greater number of loci than those detected by RAPD analysis, thus the AFLP have the capacity to rapidly screen thousands of independent genetic loci.
• It is novel DNA fingerprinting technique in which no prior sequence knowledge is required for amplification.
• The number of DNA fragments in single reaction can be tuned by selection of specific primer sets.
• AFLP technique uses stringent reaction condition for primer annealing and combines the reliability of RFLP technique with the power of PCR technique.

Advantages

• AFLP is highly reproducible over RADP and RFLP.
• AFLPs are faster, less labour intensive and provide more information than RFLPs.
• Compared to RAPD, fewer primers are needed to screen all possible sites.
• AFLPs can be codominant marker like RFLPs. So it can be used for the discrimination of heterozygotes from homozygotes. AFLP analysis is especially useful in screening backcross individuals.
• AFLPs are extremely useful as a tool for DNA fingerprinting and also for cloning and mapping of variety specific genomic sequences.
• AFLP has wide spread application including assessment of genetic diversity studies, construction and saturation of linkage maps and tagging of genes.

Disadvantages

• AFLP generate huge quantity of information, which may need automated analysis therefore computer technology.
• AFLP markers display dominance.