Genetic diversity of breeding popcorn lines determined by SSR markers

Information about genetic dissimilarity is very important to corroborate genealogical relationships and to predict the most heterozygotic hybrid combinations. Eight popcorn S6 lines of diverse germplasm types were evaluated using simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. Of a total of 51 evaluated polymorphic primers, 15 were used for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. The genetic distance was estimated by Rogers' modified distance. The different popcorn breeding programs in Brazil are possibly using highly similar base-populations. The genetic similarity of lines P1-3 and P8-1 was lowest, while P3-3 and P8-2 were genetically more similar. The cophenetic correlation showed that the Unweighted Pair-Group Method Using Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) was reliable to discriminate the genotypes in five groups. The clusters were consistent with the estimates of genetic identity. There was a moderate coincidence degree between the groups and genealogy of lines. Higher levels of heterozygosity are expected from crosses between the group containing lines P3-3 and P7-3 with that of P1-3 and P7-4. Crosses between lines P1-3 and P8-1 are also promising

Classification of the coefficients of variation for sugarcane crops

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the range of classification of variation coefficient in experiments with sugarcane. For this study, some of the variables that are mostly used by researchers of the culture were considered. The data was obtained after extensive bibliographical revision from scientific journals, data base from the improvement program of sugarcane from the Federal University of Viçosa, master dissertations, doctorate thesis and technical reports. Classification ranges were proposed according to the Costa method, in which is based the use of a median and pseudo-sigma. The variables tons of stalks per hectare and tons of pol per hectare presented the highest ranges of the classification of the coefficients of variation, while the variable percentage of sucrose presented the lowest range. All of the variables presented specific ranges of classification, showing the need to consider, in the classification of coefficients of variation, the nature of the variable being studied