Genetic Diversity Estimation of Maize Cultivars Based on Protein Profiles in Different Conditions

Maize is the highest yielding cereal in the world containing tremendous variation in morphological and physiological traits. This diversity allows it to be cultivated in a range of environment. Knowledge of maize genetic diversity is essential for its germplasm conservation, planning breeding programmes etc. salt soluble proteins are suitable for characterization of maize cultivars as they correspond to functional genome polymorphism. In this s tudy protein profiling of 21 maize cultivars were done in different denaturing conditions (i.e. ph 2.8 ’ 6.8) of SDS-PAGE. Here more amount and number of bands were detected in neutral denaturing condition. Dendograms were constructed on the basis of UPGMA(Unweighted Pair Group Average Method) cluster analysis based on similarity matrix of the above state protein profiles. Dendogram revealed clustering of maize cultivars in neutral condition which was absent in acidic denaturing condition.