Critical points in setting up AFLP technique in olive oil.

Olive oils obtained from some single cultivars native to Apulia region (Southern Italy) were analysed by means of three AFLP primer combinations. After oil centrifugation and DNA extraction from the re-maining cell residues, the amplification reactions were carried out. The obtained results showed repro-ducible electrophoretic patterns also in the upper part of the gels containing the higher molecular weight bands. Critical points in setting up AFLP technique in olive oil have been pointed out. In partic-ular, was evidenced the influence of the DNA extraction technique, of the use of different amounts of di-gested/ligated products to be used in the pre-amplification reaction, and of the use of a different buffer for the restriction/ligation reactions. A good template concentration, obtainable avoiding the dilution before subsequent selective amplifications, was found to be essential to obtain well detectable radio-labelled bands.