Determination of maize genotypes performance under water deficit using ISSR molecular index

Abstract

Shortage of water is disastrous for crop production. The aim of this work is to obtain a group of maize inbred lines and hybrids that tolerates water deficit and collecting molecular characterizations for selection. This work was conducted in the 2019 and 2020. Five maize pure inbred lines B73, A132, NA30, S7 and DR-B1 were planted according to the design of half-diallel cross-breeding of the second Griffing method, and then 10 hybrids and 5 inbred lines were planted under the impact of irrigation intervals of 5, 10 and 15 days according to the Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) in split plot with 3 replicates. Results showed significance genotypes responses. The hybrid DR-B1 × S7 recorded the highest means of seed number per row (34.49 seed row-1), weight of 300 seed (80.77 g), and single plant yield (167.2 g). The shortest irrigation interval of 5 days recorded the highest number of seeds per row (35.39 seed row-1) and single plant yield (162.3 g). Similarity analysis showed a highest genetic diversity (lowest genetic similarity) was 0.83 between inbred 4 and 5. The highest genetic divergence (the least genetic similarity) between hybrids and inbred lines was 0.78 in inbred 4 and hybrid 3 x 2, while the highest genetic divergence of 0.92 was found between hybrids of 3 x 1 and 5 x 4. UPGMA analysis showed that inbred 5 (DR-B1) and inbred 4 (S7) in addition to 1×3, 1×2 and 1×4 hybrids high divergence. Therefore, yield components characteristics can be used for selection in breeding programmes and ISSR (inter simple sequence repeats) is a promising and efficient technique in identification of maize genotypes DNA molecular markers for water deficit tolerance selection.