Genetic diversity in maize dent landraces assessed by morphological and molecular markers

Maize Research Institute “Zemun Polje” genebank maintains a collection of landraces grouped into 18 agro-ecological collected from ex-Yugoslavia territories. The application and comparison of different marker systems are important for the characterization and use of maize landraces in breeding program, as potential sources of desirable traits. In this study, 15 morphological traits, 7 RAPD primers and 10 SSR primer pairs were applied to i) to determine genetic distance between 21 maize dent landraces and ii) compare results obtained on morphological and molecular markers. Phenotypic analysis showed high level of heterogeneity between landraces. Higher level of genetic diversity was obtained with SSR than with RAPD. Genetic distance mean value for RAPD data was 0.35 i.e. for SSR 0.48. Based on the morphological traits and molecular markers, unweighted pairgroup method (UPGMA) analysis was applied for cluster analysis, using statistical NTSYSpc program package. Cluster analysis of morphological and molecular markers distances did not show the same population grouping. Better agreement with agro-ecological data was obtained with RAPD markers. Correlations between dissimilarity matrices for different types of markers were low. Data obtained in this work could be useful for further study of a larger number of landraces, and conservation of genetic resources and their genetic diversity. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. TR31028: Exploitation of maize diversity to improve grain quality and drought tolerance]