Indian Journal of Plant Genetic Resources

The genetic diversity of 82 hill maize inbreds of Almora, Bajaura and Ranichauri centers was evaluated using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Thirty seven decamer random primers were selected out of more than 100 primers screened, which resulted in the amplification of 196 fragments, out of which 160 (81.63%) were polymorphic. The data were used to generate the similaritymatrix using Jaccard's similarity coefficient and a dendrogram was constructed using UPGMA. The similarity among the inbreds ranged from 0.50 to 0.89 with an average of 0.70. The dendrogram clustered the inbreds into three major groups. The inbreds from different centers, generally, clustered in different groups. The results showed that RAPDs can be used as a tool for determining the extent of genetic diversity among maize inbreds and the diverse inbreds from different groups may be utilized successfully in the development of maize hybrids so as to aid in the choice of superior crosses to be made among the inbred lines.