Whole genome sequencing of highland and lowland maize landraces

We selected 108 maize landraces from CIMMYT's germplasm bank representing highland and lowland sites (one landrace accession per site) across a broad geographical regions of Mexico and South America where maize landraces are cultivated. The maize landrace panel consisted of 28 individuals from high elevation sites (> 2000 masl) and 28 individuals from low elevation sites (<1000 masl) of Mexico, and 26 individuals from high elevation sites and 26 individuals from low elevation sites of South America. The highland and lowland landraces were paired latitudinally and east-west of the continental divide, such that both landrace accessions of a pair collected from the same 1-degree of latitude bin and all pairwise distances between accessions were greater than 50 km.