Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important crop next to wheat and rice due to its high yield efficiency. It is one of the
prominent widely grown C4 crop with a high rate of photosynthetic activity leading to high grain and biomass yield
potential. Genetic diversity is very obligatory for Upgrading of maize crop. This study was conducted to determine
genetic and molecular diversity among eight maize genotypes using ten simple sequence repeat (SSR) primers. The
number of alleles per marker varied from one to three with average of 0.7 alleles. Bnlg1885 and Bnlg1600 detected
maximum of three alleles while phi101 detected lowest of one allele. Seven primers out of ten viz. bnlg1018, bnlg1396,
phi049, phi029, phi088, umc1008, phi072 studied failed to amplify any band and showed monomorphic pattern. The PIC
values of the SSR loci varied from 0.60 (bnlg1600) to 0.70 (phi101) with the mean of 0.19. SSR markers being codominant in nature identified heterozygotes among the twenty inbreds lines. Out of ten markers, seven markers
bnlg1018, bnlg1396, phi049, phi029, phi088, umc1008, phi072 did not show any heterozygotes, while others detected as
6 heterozygotes out of 8 inbred lines investigated with an average of 0.75 heterozygotes per marker. The pair wise
genetic similarity was calculated by Jaccard’s similarity coefficients, which ranged from 0.08 to 1.55 with an average
similarity of 0.63. The minimum genetic similarity (0.08) was found between five pairs, HUZM-356 with HUZM-47 and
HUZM-53 with HUZM-147. The maximum similarity (0.73) was found between HUZM-47 with HUZM-36.