RFLP's revealed among elite inbred lines and associations among lines revealed by multivariate analysis --J. S. C. Smith, S. L. Bowen, R. A. Tenborg, R. Feazel, O. S. Smith and D. Grant We have screened 261 maize DNA probes against 12 elite inbred lines with genomic DNA restricted separately with BamHI, EcoRI, and HindIII. Eighty-three probes were made at Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., 67 were provided by Ben Burr (Brookhaven, NY) and 111 were provided by Dave Hoisington (University of Missouri at Columbia). Two hundred forty-five of the probes have been mapped, to date, in maize; all chromosome arms were represented among the probes. The 12 inbred lines encompassed a range of germplasm diversity that is currently used in the U.S. corn belt.

Percent relationships between the lines according to pedigrees ranged from 0% to 38% for 11 of the lines; one pair was more closely related at 98% by pedigree. Of the 261 probes, 190 gave polymorphic banding patterns that were either single or double banded for one or more of the restriction enzyme treatments and thus, their simplicity of banding would make them amenable to genetic analysis of the variants. For the 12 lines, the 190 probes revealed 772 electrophoretic variants. Individual probes revealed up to 9 variants across the 12 lines; frequently 2 individual restriction enzyme treatments were necessary to reveal 5 or more variants for each of the probes. Principal component and cluster analysis of the RFLP data showed associations among lines that agreed with those that would be expected on the basis of pedigree.

RFLP's provide a wealth of variants that should be useful in describing inbred lines and hybrids, corroborating pedigrees, and revealing germplasm associations among lines.

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