Assement of genetic stability and fidelity of some micropropagated Vitis vinifera L. "Feteasca neagra" clones by ampelometric and RAPD markers.

Occurrence of genetic variations during micropropagation is occasionally encountered when the cultures are maintained in vitro for long period. Grapevine commercial micropropagation has been constrained by the possibility that the phenotype of the resulting plants may be modified. In this work, we observed the characteristics of some self-rooted grapevine plants (Feteasca neagra), derived from micropropagation or from woody cuttings over several years after they have been planted in the greenhouse. The fifteen primers selected for this study generated a total number of 69 scorable bands, ranging from 2620 bp to 200 bp in size. The number of bands for each primer varied from 2 to 8 with an average of 4.6 bands per RAPD primer. All regenerated plant types, when examined by RAPD analysis did not show any nuclear DNA polymorphism. Our results proved that RAPD markers can be used to gain rapid and precise information about genetic similarities or dissimilarities in micropropagation systems.