Heritability of Pod Dehiscence and Its Association with Some Agronomic Characters in Soybeans1

Abstract

Individual plant measurements of parental, F1, and F2 populations and F3 progenies of four soybean crosses involving three varieties of the domestic species, (Glycine max (L.) Merr.), and a plant introduction of the wild species, (G. ussuriensis Regel and Maack), were used to determine heritability and associations of pod dehiscence (shattering) and some important agronomic characters in soybeans. Broad sense heritability estimates for pod dehiscence, date of flowering, date of maturity, and days from flowering to maturity generally were high (above 90%) and varied only slightly in the different crosses. Estimates for seed size varied from 40% in the cross between the largest and smallest seed parents to 69% in the cross between parents with the smallest seeds. There also was a tendency for the characters pod dehiscence, date of flowering, date of maturity, days from flowering to maturity, and seed size of individual Fe plants to persist in the F3 generations as indicated by highly significant regression coefficients.Genotypic and phenotypic correlation coefficients indicated that associations between pod dehiscence, and date of flowering, date of maturity, days from flowering to maturity, seed size, and oil and protein content presented no serious limitation to breeding for these characters, especially in crosses where both parents were classified as G. max. There was evidence of an association between pod dehiscence and date of maturity in two populations derived from crosses of the wild and domestic species and between pod dehiscence and seed size in one interspecific cross and in one cross involving only the domestic species.