Abstract: The aim of the study was to determine the usefulness of AFLP method to assess genetic diversity of varieties and landraces of Phaseolus vulgaris and Phaseolus coccineus L., syn. Phaseolus multiflorus Wild. collected during field expeditions, and stored in the National Centre for Plant Genetic Resources. Experiments were performed using 8 primers with EcoRI and MseI primer 8, which gave the 64 tested combinations of primers. This allowed to select 15 pairs of primers that generate the highest number of polymorphic bands on polyacrylamide gels. The obtained results of separation of DNA fragments were used to determine the similarity of the studied objects by cluster analysis based on Jaccard similarity coefficient. The results showed the usefulness of the AFLP method to distinguish different populations of Phaseolus vulgaris L. and determination of their diversity within the populations. In the framework of the isolated clusters, especially in the case of Phaseolus coccineus L, the groups consisting of a varieties similar to each other and homogeneous landraces, can be extracted. In most cases consisted of groups were characterized not only by the similarity of DNA, but they were also similar in terms of morphological characteristics of seeds and place where they were collected.

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