Genetic divergence studies in maize (Zea mays L.) inbreds

Abstract

Selection of genetically diverse parents along with their per se yield performance is an important prerequisite to obtain better and desirable recombinants. Keeping this in view, forty seven maize inbred lines were characterized based on ten quantitative traits viz., days to 50% tasseling, days to 50% silking, days to maturity, plant height (cm), ear length (cm), ear height (cm), 100-seed weight (g), kernel rows per ear, number of kernels per row and grain yield per plant (g) using Mahalanobis D2 statistic. D2 analysis distributed the 47 genotypes into seven clusters of which cluster I was the largest with 12 genotypes. The highest intra-cluster distance was observed in the cluster IV (45.59). The maximum inter-cluster distance was observed between the clusters V and VII (436.57) indicating the importance of the genotypes present in these clusters for exploiting heterosis for the desirable traits of these clusters.