DNA FINGERPRINTING OF PAKISTANI MAIZE HYBRIDS AND PARENTAL LINES USING SIMPLE SEQUENCE REPEAT MARKERS

Maize is important cereal crop which is used a major source of dietary ingredients. Due to implementation of Plant Breeders Rights, plant variety protection is absolute necessity. Plant variety protection using morphological markers is not a reliable source due to heavy influence of environmental factors. However, DNA fmgerprinting using molecular markers is reliable technique as these are unaffected by environment. Present study was carried out for DNA fingerprinting of 08 maize genotypes comprising of 03 hybrids and 05 parental lines using 209 Simple Sequence Repeat markers. Sixteen SSR markers were not amplified, 19 were found monomorphic and 174 were polymorphic. A sum of 1015 alleles was amplified and 783 were found polymorphic. Maximum number of alleles (21) was recorded for umc1676, maximum number of polymorphic alleles (16) were recorded for p-Phi008. Polymorphic Information Content values ranged from 0.0 (umc1179) to 0.94 (umc1676) with an average 0.67. Jaccard's similarity coefficient was used to construct a dendrogram based on unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean and SAHN clustering. Maize hybrids and parental lines were classified to 03 clusters i.e. Group I, II and III on 96% similarity coefficient. DNA fmgerprints were also developed for identification of maize hybrids as well as parental lines which will be useful for variety protection in future.