Phenotypic and molecular characterization of a set of tropical maize inbred lines from a public breeding program in Brazil.

Background: The characterization of genetic diversity and population differentiation for maize inbred lines from breeding programs is of great value in assisting breeders in maintaining and potentially increasing the rate of genetic gain. In our study, we characterized a set of 187 tropical maize inbred lines from the public breeding program of the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV) in Brazil based on 18 agronomic traits and 3,083 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) markers to evaluate whether this set of inbred lines represents a panel of tropical maize inbred lines for association mapping analysis and investigate the population structure and patterns of relationships among the inbred lines from UFV for better exploitation in our maize breeding program.

Results: Our results showed that there was large phenotypic and genotypic variation in the set of tropical maize inbred lines from the UFV maize breeding program.