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Microsatellite variation in maize landraces from Northwestern Argentina: genetic diversity, population structure and racial affiliations

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Abstract

The highland region or Northwestern Argentina (NWA) is one of the southernmost areas of native maize cultivation and constitutes an expansion of the peruvian Andes sphere of influence. To examine the genetic diversity and racial affiliations of the landraces cultivated in this area, 18 microsatellite markers were used to characterize 147 individuals from 6 maize races representative of traditional materials. For the whole data set, a total of 184 alleles were found, with an average of 10.2 alleles per locus. The average gene diversity was 0.571. The observed patterns of genetic differentiation suggest that historical association is probably the main factor in shaping population structure for the landraces studied here. In agreement with morphological and cytogenetic data, Bayesian analysis of NWA landraces revealed the occurrence of three main gene pools. Assessment of racial affiliations using a combined dataset including previous data on American landraces showed a clear relationship between one of these gene pools and typical Andean races, whereas the remaining two gene pools exhibited a closer association to Caribbean accessions and native germplasm from the United States, respectively. These results highlight the importance of integrating regional genetic studies if a deeper understanding of maize diversification and dispersal is to be achieved.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Ing. J. Cámara Hernández and A.M. Miante Alzogaray for helpfull discussion on racial characteristics. We are grateful to Dr. J. Doebley and Dr. Y. Matsuoka for kindly providing us the SSR data from Matsuoka et al. (2002a) and Liu et al. (2003). We are also in debt to Dr. Jim Holland, for generously sending us the inbred lines used to establish allele equivalencies between datasets; and to the anonymous reviewers who have greatly improved the manuscript. Several grants from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (PIP 2296, PIP 5927), the Universidad de Buenos Aires (EX-317), and the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (BID 1201 OC-AR PICT 04443, BID 1728 OC-AR583 PICT 14119) are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Intendente Güiraldes y Costanera Norte s/n, 4to. Piso, Pabellón II, C1428EHA, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Verónica V. Lia, Lidia Poggio & Viviana A. Confalonieri

  2. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Avenida Rivadavia 1917, C1033AAJ, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Verónica V. Lia, Lidia Poggio & Viviana A. Confalonieri

  3. Instituto de Biotecnología, CICVyA, INTA, Cautelar, Los Reseros y Las Cabañas s/n, B1686ICG, Hurlingham, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Verónica V. Lia

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  1. Verónica V. Lia
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  2. Lidia Poggio
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  3. Viviana A. Confalonieri
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Correspondence to Verónica V. Lia.

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Communicated by A. Charcosset.

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122_2009_1108_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Fig. S1 Neighbor-joining tree of 71 STRUCTURE outputs derived from the analysis of population structure in maize landraces from Northwestern Argentina. Distances among outputs were calculated following the methods of Camus-Kulandaivelu et al. (2007) (PDF 14 kb)

122_2009_1108_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Fig. S2 Neighbor-joining tree of 71 STRUCTURE outputs derived from the analysis of population structure in a combined dataset including maize landraces from Northwestern Argentina and a set of American landraces from Matsuoka et al. (2002a). Distances among outputs were calculated following the methods of Camus-Kulandaivelu et al. (2007) (PDF 14 kb)

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Lia, V.V., Poggio, L. & Confalonieri, V.A. Microsatellite variation in maize landraces from Northwestern Argentina: genetic diversity, population structure and racial affiliations. Theor Appl Genet 119, 1053–1067 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-009-1108-0

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