Molecular diversity in inbreds of quality protein maize (Zea mays)

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were employed to assess molecular diversity in twenty maize inbred lines. Eight out of the ten primers screened revealed polymorphism among the genotypes. Most of the primers revealed single polymorphic band and average number of polymorphic band was 3 per locus. Discrimination rate (DR) ranged from 0.23 (bnlg2328 and umc1304) to 0.83 (bnlg1520) with an average of 0.33. Molecular analysis revealed a very high level of diversity on the basis of polymorphism information content (PIC) value among the lines, which ranged between 0.43 (phi120) and 0.87 (mmc0063). This clearly indicated high genetic variability among the lines. Genetic similarity based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient ranged from 0.22 to 0.72, indicating narrow genetic variability among the genotypes based on SSR markers. The twenty maize inbreds formed six clusters in which I and II were major clusters and divided into subclusters.