Plant Genome I Conference
Town & Country Conference Center, San Diego, CA, November, 1992.
PG-I: POLYMORPHIC DNA MARKERS IN CLONAL IDENTIFICATION AND PEDIGREE
CONFIRMATION OF WHITE BIRCH (Betula pendula Roth.)
POLYMORPHIC DNA MARKERS IN CLONAL IDENTIFICATION AND PEDIGREE
CONFIRMATION OF WHITE BIRCH (Betula pendula Roth.)
Jussi Tammisola*, Seppo Lapinjoki +, Satu Akerman +, Mikko Regina
^, Atte v.Wright ^, Hans Soderlund *, Veli Kauppinen *, Anneli
Vihera-Aanio @, Risto Hagqvist # and Pirkko Velling@
* VTT, biotechnical laboratory, PO Box 202, SF-02151 Espoo,
Finland, Telefax +358 0 456 4462, Internet:
Jussi.Tammisola@vtt.fi; + VTT, biotechnical laboratory, PO Box
1627, SF-70211 Kuopio, Finland; ^ Univ. of Kuopio, Dept of
Pharmac. Chem., PO Box 1627, SF-70211, Finland; @ The Finnish
Forest Research Institute, PO Box 18, SF- 01301 Vantaa, Finland;
# The Foundation for Forest Tree Breeding in Finland,
Haapastensyrja, SF-12600 Layliainen, Finland
The origin or identity of individual tree clones will be of
importance in the future with wider commercial applications of
cloned forests. The breeder usually makes crosses between
selected trees or families. Hence the material in a short-term
tree breeding program rarely constitutes a randomly mating
mendelistic population but rather a heterogeneous collection of
families or subpopulations with bottleneck effects and with a
disproportionate and variable number of near relatives.
Therefore, problems arise in the identification in defining the
reference population and its pertinent allele frequencies.'-'
With birch it is not sufficient only to discriminate between
non-related individuals, as is common practice e.g. in forensic
medicine, but the analytical methods should also allow
discrimination between certain kinds of relatives. The basic
question is whether two individual trees under consideration
share a common genotype or not, taking all relevant situations in
breeding or forestry practice into account, possible misuse of
materials included. A consensus' is needed among breeders both
on the required degree of resolution and on which extreme
situations may really occur in their applications. The allele
frequency limits applied and the values of the identification
probabilities estimated will depend on these consensus
postulates. In the Finnish project for the genetic mapping of
white birch PCR-based markers (RAPDs and microsatellites) are
first used for controlling the authenticity of clones and for
checking a posteriori the valuable crosses against errors. The
principles will be presented and the use of RAPDs for pedigree
confirmation in birch breeding material will be demonstrated.
Lewontin, R. C. and Hartl, D. L. (1991). Population Genetics
in Forensic DNA Typing. Science 254: 1745-1750.
Roberts, L. (1991). Fight Erupts Over DNA Fingerprinting.
Science 254:1721-1723.
Chakraborty, R. and Kidd, K.K. (1991). The Utility of DNA
Typing in Forensic Work. Science 254: 1735-1739.
Roberts, L. (1992). DNA Fingerprinting: Academic Reports.
Science 256: 300-301.
Return to Previous Page or Intl-PAG Homepage