Shubham Sharma, Haroon Rashid Hakla and Mohammad Urfan
Abstract
Cereal crops are the most important crops globally. They constitute the staple food for most of the people. With the increasing world population, food scarcity is posing a global challenge. So, there is a need to increase the food production with the available land. This increase is only possible with the use of modern scientific techniques. Maize is the third most important cereal crop which is grown globally. To increase its yield, there is an urgent need to find those varieties that have a large seed size and weight. This can be done using Genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which is a better approach than the traditional breeding methods. For the current study, a large population size consisting of 334 maize accessions of the Ames panel was used. The Genome Based Sequence of the accessions is freely available at https://www.panzea.org. The genomic data was filtered using Trait Analysis by Association, Evolution, and Linkage (TASSEL) software. The GWAS analysis was done using the BLINK model in the GAPIT library in R-studio. One significant SNPs was found to be associated with seed weight. The findings provided valuable insights into the genetic basis of the seed biomass allocation and will aid in the development of such varieties that produce large-sized seeds and are crucial for food security.