Drought is one of the major abiotic factors that have a serious effect on the production of cereals crops including maize, which is grown widely in the world. Screening based on drought facilitates selection of inbred lines and an understanding of drought-tolerant traits. The effect of drought stress and rescue after stress on maize inbred lines was investigated in this study. Different plant growth attributes namely plant height, leaf area and weight, stem weight, root length, shoot and root fresh and dry weight, and total leaf chlorophyll content were measured. Six flint inbred lines (FLD 12, FLD 23, FLD 24, FLD 33, FLD 35, and FLD 37) were screened as drought-tolerant lines, whereas another six flint inbred lines (FLD 01, FLD 13, FLD 16, FLD 18, FLD 29, and FLD 31) were screened as drought susceptible lines. Growth attributes under different drought conditions were subjected to a correlation test and analysis of variance and showed highly significant relationships with each other. The drought effect differed with different inbred lines, indicating a wide variability of drought response at the early growth stage of maize plants. The results obtained from this study will be useful for selecting maize inbred lines in future breeding programs for enhancing drought tolerance.
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We selected 68 Chinese maize inbred lines to understand the genetic diversity, population structure, and marker-trait associations for eight agronomic traits and 50 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers. In this study, effective traits, such as days of anthesis (DA), days of silking (DS), ear height (EH), plant to ear height ratio (ER), plant height (PH), and leaf width (LW) were divided into PC1 and PC2 by PCA analysis for maize inbred lines. Genetic diversity analysis revealed a total of 506 alleles at 50 SSR loci. The mean number of alleles per locus was 10.12. The averages of genetic diversity (GD) and polymorphic information content (PIC) values were 0.771 and 0.743, respectively. Based on a membership probability threshold of 0.80, the population structure revealed that the total inbred lines were divided into three major groups with one admixed group. A marker-trait association using Q + K MLM showed that nine SSR markers (bnlg1017, umc2041, umc2400, bnlg105, umc1229, umc1250, umc1066, umc2092, and umc1426) were related with seven agronomic traits. Among these SSR markers, eight SSR markers were associated with only one agronomic trait (DA, DS, ER, LL, LW, PH, and ST), whereas one SSR marker (umc1229) was associated with two agronomic traits (DA and ST). These results will help in optimizing the choice of inbred lines for cross combinations, as well as in selecting markers for further maize breeding programs.
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We evaluated genetic diversity and population structure in 32 Canadian maize inbred lines and performed association analysis for five agronomical traits and 50 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Genetic diversity analysis revealed a total of 381 alleles at the 50 SSR loci. The average number of alleles per locus was 7.6. The average genetic diversity and polymorphic information content values were 0.709 and 0.676, respectively. The average major allele frequency was 0.414. Population structure analysis indicated that these maize inbred lines were comprised of four major groups and one admixed group based on a membership probability threshold of 0.80. A general linear model showed 20 marker-trait associations involving 12 SSR markers associated with the four agronomic traits except for leaf length. For these marker-trait associations, phi056, mmc0022, bnlg1621, bnlg1695, phi116, and bnlg1028 were associated with only one trait. The other nc005, bnlg1012, phi065, and umc1982 were associated with two traits. Two SSR markers, mmc0111 and umc1038, were associated with three traits. These results will help in optimizing the choice of parents for crossing combinations, as well as in selecting markers for marker-assisted selection for maize improvement.
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