Exploring Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Turkish Black Sea Region Maize (Zea mays L.) Germplasm using SSR Markers

OpenAlex İngilizce

Plant landraces are heterogeneous plant populations that have adapted to local environmental conditions and serve as a source of genetic variations that can be used for the breeding perspectives. Studies regarding genetic diversity assessment are very important as they provide an opportunity for the scientific community to investigate novel genetic variations for the genetic improvement of crops. Maize is one of the most important cereal crops and provides daily calories to millions of people all over the world. This study aimed to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of 32 local maize genotypes collected from the Black Sea Region of Turkey using SSR markers. Molecular characterization was performed using the 14 most polymorphic primers that yielded a total of 42 bands. An average of 3 alleles per SSR primer was detected, and the number of alleles varied from 1 (phi022) to 6 (umc1571). The unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA) clustering divided maize accessions into three main populations. According to Nei's genetic distances, DZ-M-145 (Corum) and DZ-M-20 (Trabzon) genotypes were the closest (0.03) genetically related populations, while DZ-M-68 (Artvin) and DZ-M-55 (Rize) were the most genetically distant (0.63) populations. The study identified molecular genetic diversity not mentioned for maize plants from the Black Sea. On this occasion, new opportunities have been created for hybrid maize products.