DNA fingerprinting of commercial maize hybrids and their parental lines using simple sequence repeat markers

摘要

Maize is an important cereal crop of Northwestern Himalayan region of India. New hybrids are being released and recommended for the region to meet varied and diversified uses of maize. However, the contamination of hybrid seeds reduces the genetic andphysiological quality of seeds leading to decreased crop productivity. DNA fingerprinting characterization of hybrids and their parental lines using molecular markers confers significant advantages over morphological and biochemical markers. The presentstudy was carried out to genotype seven commercial maize hybrids and their male (P,) and female (P2) parental lines using thirty six SSR markers. Only nineteen SSR markers generated polymorphic alleles. The polymorphic markers amplified a total of 46 alleles with molecular weight ranging between 110 and 240 base pairs. Polymorphic information content ranged from 0.21 to 0.72 with a mean of 0.47. Jaccard's similarity coefficient was used to construct a dendrogram based on unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean and SAHN clustering. The maize hybrids and parental lines grouped into four main clusters, A, B, C and D at 49 per cent similarity coefficient. The results confirmed the usefulness of SSR markers as a tool in the development of suitable DNA fingerprints of maize hybrids and parental lines. The SSR marker showing unique amplification pattern for a particular hybrid would serve as the diagnostic genetic marker for that hybrid and the DNA fingerprints generated can be used as ready reference for identification of maize hybrids and authentication of genetic purity of different seed lots.