Evaluation of AFLP for the grouping of Bradyrhizobium strains

Abstract

In recent years we have characterized 250 Bradyrhizobium strains, mainly from Senegal, using several taxonomic techniques i.e. numerical taxonomy of phenotypic features, Biolog system, SDS-PAGE of total cellular proteins, 16S rDNA RFLP and sequence analyses, 16S-23S rDNA intergenic gene spacer RFLP and sequence analyses, AFLP, DNA:DNA hybridizations. Here we evaluate the taxonomic resolving power of these techniques by comparing the results obtained on various subsets of the same strains. We conclude that AFLP is a useful method for an initial grouping of Bradyrhizobium strains and provides infraspecific information. However, from a limited comparison, it appears that the less labor-intensive 16S-23S rDNA intergenic gene spacer analysis gives similar results and may provide additional information on deeper groupings.