Short Communication Conservation of Billbergia zebrina genetic resources: AFLP polymorphism of in vitro regenerated genotypes Lirio L. Dal Vesco 1 , Valdir M. Stefenon 2 , Leocir J. Welter 3 , Neusa Steiner 1 and Miguel P. Guerra 1 * 1 Programa de Po ´ s-graduac ¸a ˜o em Recursos Gene ´ticos Vegetais, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 88.034-001 Floriano ´polis, SC, Brazil, 2 Programa de Po ´ s-graduac ¸a ˜o em Cie ˆncias Biolo ´gicas, Universidade Federal do Pampa/Campus Sa ˜o Gabriel, 97300-000 Sa ˜o Gabriel, RS, Brazil and 3 Universidade Federal do Pampa/Campus Itaqui, 97650-000 Itaqui, RS, Brazil Received 19 September 2011; Accepted 13 November 2011 – First published online 12 December 2011 Abstract Biotechnological techniques comprise useful tools for the conservation of endangered plant gen- etic resources. In the present work, polymorphism and usefulness of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers in assessing the genetic diversity in populations of Billbergia zebrina were investigated in nodular cultures and adult plants of the species. AFLP markers revealed moderate-to-high genetic diversity based on the estimations of Nei’s gene diversity (mean H e ¼ 0.28), Shannon index of diversity (mean H S ¼ 0.48) and the number of polymorphic fragments (mean of 56.17 polymorphic fragments over six primer pairs). In comparison to published studies of population genetics performed in other bromeliad species, the present study suggests that natural populations of B. zebrina likely maintain high levels of genetic diversity, an important feature towards conservation of plant genetic resources. The results obtained reveal that AFLP markers comprise a powerful tool in order to assess the levels of genetic diversity in natural populations of this endangered species. Integrating AFLP markers with in vitro propagation techniques is understood as an adequate strategy for conservation programmes of this species. Keywords: Atlantic Rain Forest; Bromeliaceae; Bromelioideae; bromeliads; epiphyte; genetic diversity Experimental Plant material Billbergia zebrina (Herbert) Lindley (Supplementary Fig. S1, available online only at http://journals. cambridge.org) is a bromeliad native to the Atlantic Rain Forest, classified as vulnerable in the List of Threatened Species of the Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil (FZB-RS, 2003). Aiming to evaluate the polymorphism of amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers to assess the genetic diversity and to establish conservation strat- egies for this species, nodular cultures (NCs) and adult plants were genotyped and their relationship evaluated. DNA was extracted from 36 samples of NCs randomly col- lected among 12 treatments of micro- propagation exper- iments (Dal Vesco et al., 2011), comprising three samples per treatment. NCs were generated from a mix of mature *Corresponding author. E-mail: mpguerra@cca.ufsc.br q NIAB 2011 ISSN 1479-2621 Plant Genetic Resources: Characterization and Utilization (2012) 10(1); 20–23 doi:10.1017/S1479262111000918