Heterotic grouping of exotic maize inbred lines by SSR markers and elite maize inbred lines

It is significant for improving the efficiency and predictability of maize breeding to study heterotic grouping of maize. In this study，40 simple sequence repeat（SSR）primers and 6 elite maize inbred lines were used to detect genetic variation and heterotic grouping among 49 exotic inbred lines. A total of 242 alleles was detected with a range between 4 to 11 and an average of 6.05 alleles per locus. The PIC and gene diversity showed the similar trend， varied from 0.3224（phi072）to 0.8397（bnlg2235）and 0.3640（phi072）-0.8538（bnlg2235），the averages were 0.6347 and 0.6767. Inbred lines were clustered into 4 groups referring to the pedigree of leading self lines，including Tangsipingtou，Reid，Improved Reid and Lancaster group.