Genetic fingerprinting: Advancing the frontiers of crop biology research

enetic fingerprinting is one of the DNA-based techniques that have permeated a wide gamut of biological research, beginning with forensic biology and medicine and now ex- tending to agriculture. The advent of polymerase chain re - action (PCR) ushered a revolutionary approach in producing genetic fingerprints, supplanting hybridization-based techniques. PCR-based methods can be accomplished using either arbitrary markers of un- known location in the genome or those markers that target specific genome sites. Among agricultural crops, rice and maize are the most intensively characterized for DNA markers. At present, genetic finger - printing has also been applied in many aspects of crop biology, such as taxonomy and phylogeny, diversity analysis, hybridity testing, gene mapping, molecular breeding, and somaclonal variation. This paper describes genetic fingerprinting technology and discusses its applica - tions in the major crops of the Philippines, highlighting the progress made by Filipino scientists.