COMPARISON OF RFLP AND MORPHOLOGICAL DISTANCES BETWEEN MAIZE ZEA-MAYSL INBRED LINES - CONSEQUENCES FOR GERMPLASM PROTECTION PURPOSES

A total of 145 maize inbred lines, representative of material released in France. were differentiated using RFLP markers and a set of discri minant morphological traits in order to evaluate the use of molecular markers for large-scale germplasm diversity analysis and determination of distinctness. Several criteria are proposed with respect to choice of probes, which should give reliable results for routine studies and have a known single-locus genetic determinism to avoid redundancy. A method is proposed by which to incorporate the data from different res triction enzymes obtained with the same probe. The precision of the es timation of the genetic distance is given. The relationship between mo lecular and morphological distances appears to be triangular, molecula r divergence behaving as a limiting factor for morphological divergenc e. This suggested a scheme for incorporating molecular markers in stud ies of distinctness.