Heterotic grouping of 56 maize inbred lines by SSR markers

Simple sequence repeat(SSR) was used to detect genetic variation among 50 maize inbred lines and 6 testers.The results showed that a set of 43 polymorphic SSR primers were selected from 60 primers,which detected 139 alleles among the lines tested.The average number of alleles per SSR locus was 3.23 with a range from 2 to 6.The value of polymorphism information content(PIC) for each SSR locus varied from 0.216 to 0.821 with an average of 0.607.The inbred lines were classified into 5 clusters by UPGMA(unweighted pair group method arithmetic average) which could be simplified into SS(LRC,PA,Reid) and NSS(PB,SPT,Lancaster) heterotic groups.The defined population analysis of inbred lines provided the basis for selecting new hybridized combinations.