The present work was conducted to evaluate AFLP (Amplified Fragment Length
Polymorphism) and SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) marker systems for their ability to
detect genetic diversity within a set of 29 common bean accessions spanning both the
Andean and Mesoamerican gene pools and to compare the efficiency of these two marker
types in the classification of accessions according to the gene pools of origin. The ten
AFLP primer combinations produced 112 polymorphic bands, while 14 SSR primer pairs
generated 100 polymorphic bands. Almost two-fold higher value of expected heterozygosity
was calculated for SSR (0.63) than for AFLP (0.32). As the result of a higher multiplex ratio
component (11.20), higher marker index value was observed for AFLP (3.56) in
comparison to SSR (0.63). The higher level of polymorphism detected by SSR markers has
contributed to the lower genetic similarity estimates based on SSR markers (mean 0.25) as
compared to AFLP markers (mean 0.88). The dendrograms generated with hierarchical
UPGMA (Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean) cluster analysis of the
Jaccard’s similarity coefficient matrices revealed two major clusters, which were identified