Morphological and Genetic Characterization of Maize Landraces Adapted to Marginal Hills in North-West Italy

The growing interest in maize landraces over the past two decades has led to the need\r\nto characterize the Italian maize germplasm. In Italy, hundreds of maize landraces have been\r\ndeveloped, but only a few of them have been genetically characterized, and even fewer are currently\r\nemployed in agriculture or for breeding purposes. In the present study, 13 maize landraces of the west\r\nEmilia-Romagna region were morphologically and genetically characterized. These accessions were\r\nsampled in 1954 from three provinces, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza, during the characterization\r\nproject of Italian maize landraces. The morphological characterization of these 13 accessions was\r\nperformed according to the UPOV protocol CPVO/TP2/3, examining 34 phenotypic traits. A total\r\nof 820 individuals were genotyped with 10 SSR markers. The genetic characterization revealed\r\n74 different alleles, a FST mean value of 0.13, and a Nm mean of 1.73 over all loci. Moreover,\r\nAMOVA analysis disclosed a low degree of differentiation among accessions, with only 13% of\r\ngenetic variability found between populations, supporting PCoA analysis results, where the first\r\ntwo coordinates explained only 16% of variability. Structure analysis, supported by PCoA, showed\r\nthat only four accessions were clearly distinguished for both K = 4 and 6. Italian landraces can be\r\nuseful resources to be employed in maize breeding programs for the development of new varieties,\r\nadapted to different environmental conditions, in order to increase crop resilience and expand the\r\nmaize cultivation area.