Comparative analysis of genetic diversity among Egyptian commercial maize hybrids obtained by SRAP markers

Abstract EN

Inbred lines and their hybrids have been a rich resource for fundamental and applied investigations in maize.

In this work, Sequence-Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) molecular technique was used for assessing the genetic diversity of eight commercially important maize (zea mays L.) hybrids and two local genotypes.

Fourteen SRAP primers were used to analyze samples and the efficiency of the markers was compared.

Five primer combinations were able to detect the polymorphism between hybrids which was from 22.22% to 90.00% with an average of 72.27%.

Adding, the polymorphism information content (PIC) value was from 0.09 to 0.25.

Also, the values of marker index (MI) ranged from 0.09 (me4-F/em10-R) to 2.25 (me3-F/em5-R).

The maize hybrids were grouped into three main clusters.

The cluster analysis revealed similarity values ranging from 0.70 (TWC-321 and Eco-Dar) to 0.96 (SC-10 and Pio-3444).

A specific band of 550 bp, detected by primer pair me-8F/em-2R can be used to distinguish the single cross Pio-3444 from other hybrids.

It can be concluded that, SRAP markers are efficient to study the genetic purity and diversity in maize hybrids.