Association studies on soybean [Glycine max (L.)] Merrill] germplasm accessions for yield and yield attributing traits

Abstract:

The experiment was conducted to evaluate 135 soybean genotypes in order to determine the genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, correlation, and path analysis for ten quantitative characters. Analysis of variance showed the existence of significant differences among all the traits except the number of branches per plant and the number of seeds per pod. High heritability accompanied by high genetic advance was observed in plant height, number of branches per plant, number of clusters per plant, number of pods per cluster, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, hundred seed weight, and single plant yield suggested selection from these characters could be effective for future crop improvement program. Based on the association analysis characters like the number of pods per plant, plant height, number of clusters per plant, number of branches per plant, number of seeds per plant, and hundred seed weight were observed to be highly correlated with yield and hence these characters should be given more consideration in breeding for higher grain yield in soybean.