DETERMINATION of GENETIC STABILITY of TOMATO (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) GRAFTED on TOBACCO (Nicotiana tabacum L.) by RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA ANALYSIS

Grafting has been widely used in agriculture, forestry and horticulture. Grafted plants may exhibit some phenotypic variations from scions and rootstock plants. Existance and possible mechanisms of graft induced genetic variation and inheritance of graft induced characters has been debated among researchers. Use of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) as genetic marker assay enables detection of genotypic alterations. The prupose of the present study was assessment of genetic stability or any graft-induced changes at molecular level in tomato grafted on tobacco rootstock by RAPD analysis. Nicotiana tabacum L. cv. Samsun was used as rootstock and a Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. commercial cv. H-2274 was used as scion in grafts. Plants were grafted by cleft grafting method and transferred to soil field in greenhouse. DNA was isolated from fresh leaves of grafted and non-grafted plants 60 days after grafting. RAPD analysis revealed that 8 primers gave a total of 102 bands in the profiles of non-grafted tomato plants. Polymorphism of the grafted tomato plants was caluculated as 2.94% and in concordance, Genomic template stability (GTS) was 97.06%. Succesive grafting with high genomic stability, may improve crop yield in agricultural practices without involvement of genetic transformation.