Abstract
The stability of soybean genotypes is very important in breeding programs for not only the evaluation, selection, and production of cultivars but also the establishment of parameters required for the classification of genotypes into relative maturity groups (RMG). The aim of this study was to define stable genotypes for traits, such as days to flowering, days to maturity, and length of the reproductive period, and to classify them into RMG. For this purpose, 20 commercial soybean cultivars were evaluated in 12 environments distributed in the major producing regions of Brazil. Assessments according to the Eberhart and Russell method and the additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) method were effective in the identification of stable genotypes and their classification into RMG. These methods can also be used collectively for this purpose. Our results showed that the AMMI method led to a better interpretation of genotype-environment interactions. Thus, RMG obtained on the basis of stable genotypes represented a good estimate of the relative maturity of soybean crops throughout Brazil. *Corresponding author.
Highlights
The classical approach to describe the maturity of soybeans is given by the classification of genotypes into early, medium, and late phases
According to the pooled analysis, low coefficients of variation were obtained for the traits evaluated (2.3% for NDF, 1.1% for number of days to maturity (NDM), and 3.3% for number of days for the reproductive period (NDRP)), indicating good precision in establishing and conducting the experiments, as reported by Carvalho et al [20]
It had been reported that the west and southwest regions in the state of Paraná, taken in isolation, had less rain in 2008 [21] compared to other locations and years, influencing the genotypes allocated in this region to some extent
Summary
The classical approach to describe the maturity of soybeans is given by the classification of genotypes into early, medium, and late phases. In Brazil, breeding companies used a simple categorization based on the maturation cycle of soybean cultivars and classified them as early, medium early, medium, medium late, and late [1] This method is effective for evaluating crop maturity levels in a local setting, but it is not adequate for describing the relative maturity of soybean crops for a wide range of environments and latitudes in Brazilian areas where these crops are being currently cultivated [2]. This is a simple and effective system from a local standpoint, but as cultivars are cultivated in different regions and environments, the results obtained using this old classification system in such situations may be inaccurate. This system does not consider the effects of the time of planting.
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