Abstract

Tobacco (Nicotina tabacum) has been introduced to Thailand for hundreds of years. All tobaccos cultivated in
the country are legally separated to local (or early-imported) and imported cultivar groups. However, no method
could precisely differentiate the two groups, especially from cured leaf samples. Amplified fragment length
polymorphism (AFLP) analysis was introduced to estimate genetic polymorphism of 19 tobacco cultivars grown
in Thailand. Thirty-two selective primer-combinations were screened on the genomic DNA extracted from cured
leaves. 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 generally
following the cultivar groups. Almost all local cultivars were found closely related to Burley and Turkish types
of the imported group, but significantly separated from Virginia type. Our finding therefore should be an
important knowledge for further research on cultivar identification and genetic improvement of tobaccos.

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