usarium wilt (also known as Panama disease) caused byFusarium oxysporumSchlechtend. f. sp.cubense
(E.F. Smith) W.C. Snyder & H.N. Hansen (Foc) is an endemic disease in all banana (Musaspp. L.) producing
areas. The use of resistant cultivars is the recommended method for the disease control. The development
of resistant or tolerant cultivars is expensive and time-consuming since the results must be confirmed
by many years of field evaluation. In this situation, DNA markers show a great potential to improve the
efficiency and precision of conventional plant breeding. Thus, the objective of this work was to develop
a SCAR marker able to discriminate between resistant and susceptible genotypes toFocinfection. Using
genomic DNA from resistant or susceptible genotypes and 78×10-mer arbitrary primers, one RAPD band
associated to susceptibility was selected and used to generate the SCAR marker SuscPD-F/SuscPD-R. This
marker was validated on 28 banana cultivars which were resistant or susceptible to infection byFoc. The
results indicated a high degree of specificity of the marker, which was able to discriminate between the
two contrasting groups (resistant or susceptible). The discriminatory power of the new marker was 93%