Distinction between closelyrelated apple cultivars of the Belle-Fleur family using RFLP and AFLP markers

The Belle-Fleur family is a group consisting of mainly three old and distinct apple cultivars: Belle-Fleur de Brabant, Belle-Fleur de France and Belle-Fleur Large Mouche. The distinction of the three cultivars requires an expert evaluation of phenological characters of the tree and the fruits. In our experiment, we tried to correlate the pomological identification of the three Belle-Fleur cultivars with the identification obtained via RFLP and AFLP markers. For this study, nine trees supposedly identified as belonging to the Belle-Fleur family were selected and analysed using RFLP and AFLP protocols previously established in our laboratory. Results of molecular analyses were confronted to pomological observations. The observations performed on trees and fruits in the field during several years allowed to identify three of the nine trees as belonging to the cultivar Belle-Fleur de France, one tree as Belle-Fleur de Brabant cultivar and two trees as Belle-Fleur Large Mouche. Pomological observations could exclude the three other trees from belonging to the Belle-Fleur group. Results of the RFLP analysis appeared to confirm the pomological classification based on morphological observations, except for one tree of Belle-Fleur de France which presents similar RFLP patterns to Belle-Fleur de Brabant. In contrast, the AFLP results seem to match more perfectly with the morphological observations with a perfect matching between classes obtained by molecular and morphological profiles. Therefore, the AFLP appears to be a more powerful tool for the distinction of closelyrelated apple cultivars than RFLP. The results obtained using this method seem to be in closer agreement with morphological observations than those obtained with the RFLP method. Moreover, the AFLP analysis is less work-and time-consuming than the RFLP method and allows the study of large numbers of small samples, making it particularly wellsuited for routine identification.