Estimating the Breeding Potency of a Soybean Core Set

Multi-environment evaluation of a core set helps in the identification of trait-specific genetic stocks for further exploitation to sustain soybean productivity. TNAU soybean core set comprising of 50 soybean germplasm (thirty national and twenty international lines) was evaluated for variability pattern, trait association and adaptability using ten quantitative and twenty-one qualitative characters over environments, years and seasons to identify potential parents for utilization. Both quantitative and qualitative traits-based diversity analyses indicated the presence of adequate variability. The principal component analysis based on quantitative traits reduced the total variation into three major components (73.72%). Genotypes JS9305, JS(SH)99-02, IC16009 and TNAU20048 were tagged as highly divergent lines. Single plant yield (0.92) and number of pods per plant (0.92) contributed the maximum for the rotated PC1. The association analysis revealed that number of pods per plant (r = 0.88) and number of clusters per plant (r = 0.81) contributed significantly to the single plant yield. The qualitative cluster analysis divided the core set into eight clusters. A good variability was observed for plant type, pod color, seed coat color, and hilum color. In the validation experiments, a higher yield was witnessed in the hybridization involving distantly related accessions (14.1%) than the closely related parents (7.5%). It is concluded that the TNAU soybean core set has real breeding potency for future exploitation. The parents JS9305, JS(SH)99-02, IC16009 and TNAU20048 possessed a higher degree of divergence, heterosis with better adaptability and offers scope of breeding utility. © 2022 Friends Science Publishers