Principles of Plant Breeding (2+1)

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNAs

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs)

• This is a PCR (Polymerase chain reaction) based technique where a single short oligonucleotide primer which binds to many different loci, is used to amplify random sequences from a complex DNA template such as plant genome.
• For most plants the primers that are 9-10 nucleotide long are expected to generate 2-10 amplification products.
  
• The primers are generally of random sequence, biased to contain at least 50% GC content and to lack internal repeats.
• The products are easily separated by standard electrophoretic technique and visualized by UV illumination of ethidium bromide stained gels.