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Morpho-physiological traits and SSR markers-based analysis of relationships and genetic diversity among fodder maize landraces in India

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Abstract

Background

Maize is an excellent fodder crop due to its high biomass, better palatability, succulency, and nutrition. Studies on morpho-physiological and biochemical characterization of fodder maize are limited. The present study aimed to explore the genetic variation in fodder maize landraces for various morpho-physiological traits and estimation of genetic relationship and population structure.

Methods and results

The study on 47 fodder maize landraces revealed significant variation for all morpho-physiological traits except leaf-stem ratio. Plant height, stem girth, leaf-width and number of leaves showed positive correlation with green fodder yield. Morpho-physiological traits-based clustering grouped the landraces into three major clusters, whereas neighbour joining cluster and population structure analysis using 40 SSR markers revealed four and five major groups, respectively. Most landraces of Northern Himalaya-Kashmir and Ludhiana fall into a single group, whereas rest groups mainly had landraces from North-Eastern Himalaya. A total of 101 alleles were generated with mean polymorphic information content value of 0.36 and major allele frequency of 0.68. The pair wise genetic dissimilarity between genotypes ranged from 0.21 to 0.67. Mantel test revealed weak but significant correlation between morphological and molecular distance. Biochemical characterisation of superior landraces revealed significant variation for neutral detergent fibre, acid detergent fibre, cellulose and lignin content.

Conclusion

Interestingly, significant, and positive correlation of SPAD with lignin content can be explored to bypass the costly affair of invitro quality assessment for digestibility parameters. The study identified superior landraces and demonstrated the use of molecular markers in genetic diversity assessment and grouping of genotypes for fodder maize improvement.

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Data Availability

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are most grateful to ICAR for financial support. The contribution of Dr. JP Tyagi and Dr. Zahoor Ahmad Dar for shared maize landraces is sincerely acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR-Indian Institute of Maize Research, Ludhiana, 141001, Punjab, India

    Mukesh Choudhary, Alla Singh, Pardeep Kumar, Ritu Naliath, Vishal Singh, Bhupender Kumar & Sujay Rakshit

  2. School of Agriculture and Environment, Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia

    Mukesh Choudhary

  3. ICAR-Indian Grassland and Forage Research Institute, Jhansi, 284003, Uttar Pradesh, India

    MM Das

  4. Department of Plants, Soils, and Climate, College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 84322, USA

    Pardeep Kumar

  5. ICAR-Indian Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, Ranchi, 834010, Jharkhand, India

    Vishal Singh & Sujay Rakshit

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Contributions

MC and PK designed the experiments. MC, AS, MMD and PK performed the experiments. RN, BK, and VS performed a part of experiments. MC and PK analyzed the data. MC, PK, AS, VS, BK and SR wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Pardeep Kumar.

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The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. None of the authors have any non-financial conflict of interest, as well as no financial conflict.

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Choudhary, M., Singh, A., Das, M. et al. Morpho-physiological traits and SSR markers-based analysis of relationships and genetic diversity among fodder maize landraces in India. Mol Biol Rep 50, 6829–6841 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-023-08602-2

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