From experience in growing JCL for many years, the authors have found obvious differences
in yield production and flowering date but no polymorphism at the DNA level. The
substantially different performance was also found even in the plants propagated from
the same clones. The differences of DNA methylation level among JCL could be one reasonable
explanation for the phenotypic differences without nucleotide polymorphisms.
Moreover, DNA methylation has been proposed to be one of the possible factors involved
in heterosis or hybrid vigor (Zhao et al., 2008). The results from the analysis of AFLP,