Comparison of molecular genetic utilities of TD, AFLP, and MSAP among the accessions of japonica, indica, and Tongil of Oryza sativa L

Rice is one of the most important food crops in the world. Genetic diversity is essential for cultivar improvement programs. We compared genetic diversity derived from insertion–deletion (in–del) or base substitutions by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), from transposon transposition mutations by transposon display (TD), and from cytosine methylation by methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism (MSAP) in japonica , indica , and Tongil type varieties of Oryza sativa L. Polymorphic profiles from the three marker systems allowed us to clearly distinguish the three types of varieties. The indica type varieties showed the highest genetic diversity followed by the Tongil and japonica type varieties. Of the three marker systems, TD produced the highest marker indices, and AFLP and MSAP produced similar marker indices. Pair-wise comparisons of the three marker systems showed that the correlation between the two genetic markers systems (AFLP and TD, r = 0.959) was higher than the correlations between the genetic and epigenetic marker systems (AFLP and MSAP, r = 0.52; TD and MSAP, r = 0.505). Both genetic marker systems had similar levels of gene differentiation ( G ST ) and gene flow ( N m ), which differed in the epigenetic marker system. Although the G ST of the epigenetic marker system was lower than the genetic marker systems, the N m of the epigenetic marker system was higher than in the genetic marker systems, indicating that epigenetic variations have a greater influence than genetic variations among the O. sativa L. types.