Genetic Diversity of Local Maize Accessions as Revealed by Morphological Characteristics

Abstract

A total of 53 local maize accessions (LMA) were collected from 8 provinces in mountainous areas of Vietnam. Analysis indicated that the local maize accessions are highly diverse in terms of the growth duration, most of them belonging to medium maturity group with growth duration from 101 to 115 days. The maize accessions were classified into the following subspecies: Dent corn (Zea mays var. indentata) with 4 accessions, sub-dent corn (Zea mays var. indentata ) with 28 accessions and Flint corn (Zea mays var. indurata) with 21 accessions. Evaluation of 14 agro-morphological traits indicated high genetic diversity among these 53 maize accessions. With a similarity coefficient of  d = 0.218 the accessions could be divided into 6 groups. The results may serve as primary information  for collection, conservation and utilization of local maize germplasm in breeding program in Vietnam