ANALYSIS OF THE GENETIC DIVERSITY IN MAIZE LANDRACE CULTIVARS FROM NORTHERN RIO GRANDE DO SUL, BRAZIL

Maize landraces are important genetic resources for maize breeding. Many of these landrace varieties have not yet been properly studied in order to be distinguished from the others.  In this study, multivariate statistical methods were used, beyond the analysis of variance, for estimating genetic dissimilarity among 27 maize landrace accessions. Principal component analysis and clustering analysis were performed using 16 evaluated quantitative characters. The ANOVA results reported the existence of significant differences among the tested accessions for 14 evaluated characters. Two principal components almost explained 49% of found experimental variance. Four different clusters were formed by the used clustering analysis, whose results were plotted into a dendrogram. The graphical integration of this dendrogram with the PCA allowed to conclude that the variation found may be due to the genotypic distinctions existing among the four groups of accesses determined in this study.