Abstract

A laboratory experiment was carried out at the Biotechnology Research Center – Nahrain University – Baghdad for the year 2013 at the aim of assessing the extent of genetic divergence among seven inbred lines of maize and the twelve single hybrids results from Line X Tester crossing among these lines. Ten of RAPD molecular markers have been used for this purpose (OPA-07, OPA-09, OPA-11, OPA-13, OPC-12, OPD-20, OPI-01,OPO-04, OPN-16 and GB8), just five of these (OPA-09, OPC-12, OPD-20, OPN-16 and GB8) were succeeded in distinguishing among parent lines per se and their F1 hybrids by showing different pattern of DNA fragmentation. The results of genetic similarity analysis and dendrogram tree revealed that the inbred lines T1 and T6 were the most genetic divergent lines as they gained the minimum value of genetic similarity reached 68.6%, which indicates their important role in the future studies and to produce elite hybrids.