MOLECULAR MARKER TECHNIQUES IN PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY

During the last few decades, the development and use of molecular markers for the detection and revealing polymorphism at the DNA level, has been playing an increasing part in plant biotechnology and their genetic studies. There are two types of DNA based markers viz. non PCR based (RFLP) and PCR based markers (RAPD, AFLP, SSR, SNP etc.), DNA based marker techniques such as RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism), RAPD (random amplified polymorphic DNA), SSR (simple sequence repeats) and AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism) are routinely being used in ecological, evolutionary, taxonomical, phylogenic and genetic studies of plant sciences. Day by day development of such new and specific types of markers makes their importance in understanding the genomic variability and the diversity between the same as well as different species of the plants.