Polymorphism comparison of tilapia breeding groups by RAPD, AFLP and SSR

RAPD, SSR and AFLP assay were applied in polymorphism analysis of Nile tilapia breeding groups. 17 RAPD primers, 19 SSR primer pairs and 8 AFLP primer combinations showed high polymorphism ratio and good repeatability on Nile tilapia among 40 RAPD primers, 19 SSR primer pairs and 64 AFLP primer combinations, respectively. The percentages of polymorphic bands generated by RAPD, SSR and AFLP were 20.35% , 79.64% and 58.77% , respectively. The average numbers of polymorphic fragments generated by RAPD, SSR and AFLP primers were 2.06, 4.84 and 22.63, respectively. Based on these results, SSR and AFLP were more effective molecular markers for polymorphism analysis than RAPD in Nile tilapia.