Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding

Assessment of genetic diversity at molecular and morphological levels of temperate maize landraces collected from diverse ecological niches in Kashmir

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A study was conducted to carry out morpho-molecular characterization of 70 maize landraces collected from diverse ecological
niches. The ANOVA revealed signifcant differences for all the traits studied except prolifcacy and anthesis silking interval. Phenotypic
performance-based clustering using Mahalanobis distance resolved these landraces into four major clusters. The PIC values for the 25
SSR markers ranged from 0.29 (phi 129) to 0.82 (bnlg 1335) with a mean value 0.51. Analysis of molecular variance revealed that the total
genetic diversity is mainly due to within population diversity (93%). Average heterozygosity from all SSR loci was 0.15 and gene diversity
ranged from 0.87 (bnlg 1335) to 0.32 (phi 021) with a mean value of 0.56 indicated a high level of polymorphism among landraces. The
population structure analysis revealed the existence of two groups reflecting major divisions of the germplasm collected regardless of
their geographical origin. Clustering method based on Jaccard similarity coefcient and an UPGMA further confrmed the two major
clades with a signifcant level of similarity (0.28 to 0.76) among the landraces. Sub population1 was found to be genetically more diverse
with an Fst value of 0.18 than sub population 2 with Fst value of 0.10. The results showed that the studied maize landraces are diverse
making them ideal source population.

Keywords: Genetic diversity, heterotic pools, Mahalanobis D2 statistic, maize, SSR.

Info

Year: 2021
Volume: 81
Issue: 4
 Article DOI: 10.31742/ISGPB.81.4.8
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906

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