Genetic diversity and phylogeny of wild specie teosinte (Zea Nicaraguense, Iltis and Benz) within genera Zea

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays subsp. mays) is a member of the grass family Poaceae(Gramineae), together with many other important agricultural crops. The wild speciescommonly known as teosintes are the closest relatives of maize. Teosintes are wildgrasses with a native distribution area from Mexico to Nicaragua (Mesoamerican region)and are an important genetic resource for maize improvement. Teosinte from Nicaragua(Zea nicaraguensis) is to a large extent an unutilized genetic resource and its properties interms of desirable traits, such as water-lodging adaptation and disease resistance have tobe phenotypically and genetically characterized. This chapter includes results fromcytological, genetic, morphological and phylogenetic studies. Cytogenetic studies werebased on C-banding techniques. Microsatellite (SSR) markers and DNA sequences ofcpDNA regions were used for genetic diversity and phylogenetic studies respectively,whereas morphological studies involved various quantitative morphological traits. The Cbandingpattern revealed that Z. nicaraguensis is more similar to Z. luxurians than otherteosintes and cultivated maize. Among the Meso-American teosintes, Z. diploperennis, Z.perennis and Z. nicaraguensis showed the highest values in the number of rare andunique alleles and the results also indicated that the gene flow between Z. nicaraguensisand Z. luxurians has been more frequent than between other teosintes in theMesoamerican region. The morphological characterization revealed that the traits of thenumber of lateral branch nodes bearing ears, the glume width, the number of tiller nodesbearing ears and the number of tillers per plant were the most important in discriminatingbetween taxa and the principal component analysis grouped many traits around the Z.nicaraguensis, Z. luxurians and Z. mays subsp. huehuetenangensis. Finally, the variationamong cpDNA sequences need more analysis to give a definitive phylogenetic resolutionamong the five Zea species, but even so our results support the idea that Z. nicaraguensiscould be treated as a separate species distinct from Z. luxurians. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Characterization; Chloroplast; Chromosome; Gene flow; Microsatellites; Phylogenetic; Taxonomy; Teosinte genetic diversity; Zea nicaraguensis

Published in

Title: Genetic Diversity : New Research
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers

SLU Authors

• Ellneskog-Staam, Pernilla

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Biological Systematics
Genetics and Breeding in Agricultural Sciences

Publication identifier

• ISBN: 978-1-62081-598-4
• eISBN: 978-1-62081-633-2

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/132288