Banana production dates from the 1920s in Argentina. Rhizomes were introduced and dispersed by immigrants from bordering countries in the Northern provinces. There is scarce information on its genetic diversity to assist in crop breeding programs; hence studies of genetic structure between populations and individuals are fundamental for future use. Molecular markers assess the diversity of the crop. This study employed Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism to investigate the genetic variation in local banana plants from farmer's fields. Forty-four rhizomes (selected from a total of 860 plants for being stable for production) were used as plant material and 6 primer combinations selected in a previous report were used. Polymorphic fragments present in a given genotype were assigned 1 and those absent were assigned 0. The matrix generated was analyzed by univariate and multivariate analysis. A total 540 bands were scored, of which 100% were polymorphic. The number of the pattern duplicated bands was 23 and twenty-one amplicons were exclusive to banana plants collected in the same farmer's field. Hierarchical clustering and principal coordinates analyses showed differences between genotypes. The cophenetic correlation of the cluster was 0.63 while the 18% of the total molecular variation was explained by the two principal coordinates. These analyses evidence genetic diversity of the crop according to farmer's field. In agreement to this observation, analysis of molecular va

Banana micropropagation for obtaining free-virus plants frequently provokes somaclonal variation  that could increase useful genetic variability in this asexually propagated crop. Both exploring the cycle of in vitro culture in which somaclonal variation occurs and the amount of generated polymorphism, are necessary. In this work,  preliminary results of somaclonal variation during early cycles of banana in vitro culture are  reported. Four randomly selected regenerated  plants from the fifth cycle and two samples from  the mother plant were analyzed. A total of 36 AFLP  primer combinations were assayed, and 24  of them produced amplicons varying among 50- 500 bp. The mother plant presented a total of 125  different amplicons while the regenerated plants  jointly showed 131 different amplicons with a mean of 119.75 ± 3.97 per individual. High level of DNA polymorphism (24.43 %) was found among micropropagated plants and, additionally, the occurrence of somaclonal variation at earlier cycles was suggested by multivariate analysis of  Principal Coordinates. In this study, somaclonal  variation at early cycles of banana micropropagation was validated and the  adequacy of AFLP technique to assess it at the molecular level was verified. The phenotypic  effects of the detected somaclonal variations  remain to be evaluated.