Combining ability for the improvement of vegetable soybean

Abstract

AbstractOne use of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] as food is as a vegetable, also known as edamame, in which the green pods with seeds fully developed are harvested, cooked briefly, and consumed. Few efforts have been devoted to developing new soybean cultivars with high agronomic performance and characteristics suitable for human consumption. In the present research, crosses between six soybean lines were performed in a diallel scheme without reciprocals to determine the combining ability and the type of gene action that controls the inheritance of development and yield component traits for edamame production. The results showed the existence of variability among the evaluated genotypes and indicated that the progenies presented superior performance in comparison to the parental lines for important traits. The cultivar BRS267 and the inbred line USP‐13‐19‐007 had consistently high estimates of general combining ability for pod and seed size, indicating their potential as parents in breeding for edamame. Most progenies had positive specific combining ability for pod and seed size, showing that generating novel genotypic combinations through new crossings is a promising strategy for improvement. Additive effects played a major role in the inheritance for maturity traits and for pod size, seed size, and yield; both additive and non‐additive effects were important. The magnitude and significance of the correlations indicated that it is possible to improve vegetable soybean traits without affecting grain yield.