SSR markers in characterization of sweet corn inbred lines

Sweet corn differs from field corn in many important traits. So its breeding although includes some standard procedures demand application of techniques that are important for determining special traits, all because of the specificity of its usage. Application of molecular markers becomes almost a necessity for the breeding of sweet corn, especially because this is the type of maize in which still no definitive heterotic patterns have been determined. So getting to know genetic divergence of the sweet corn inbred lines is of great importance for its breeding. In this paper we analyzed genetic similarity of six sweet corn inbreds based on SSR markers. 40 SSR primers were used in DNA amplification. Results were compared and correlated with the data on specific combining ability, obtained by the diallel analysis. The results of SCA were in concurrence with genetic similarity. Values of rank correlation coefficient were negative, indicating that more similar inbred lines had smaller estimates of SCA, and lines that were less similar had higher estimates of SCA. Rank correlation coefficient between SCA and GS according to Dice coefficient was between -0,16 and -0,57*