Polymorphisms revealed by cDNA corresponding to genes involved in different agronomic traits were compared between a set of public lines and commercial hybrids. We expected that only few probes should reveal polymorphisms and that these polymorphisms should be more frequent in hybrids than in lines. In contrast, we found that all these probes revealed polymorphisms among lines and that the distribution of these polymorphisms were about the same between lines and hybrids. However for two of the probes we observed much more profiles in lines than in hybrids. Three hypotheses are discussed to explain these facts.

Moreover, two possible applications appeared: (1) lines identification and (2) to determine whether the environment, the genetic background or the genes involved in the fatty acid metabolism are responsible for variations in oleic and linoleic content.