An Assessment of Genetic variability and association studies for yield and its components of soybean MAGIC population lines (Glycine max (L.) Merrill.)

Abstract

In the present investigation, 565 soybean MAGIC population lines along with 6 checks were evaluated in augmented design in 5 blocks at Agricultural Research Station, Adilabad during kharif, 2019-20 to study genetic parameters, character association and the direct and indirect effects of the traits on seed yield. Based on range, all the traits exhibited huge amount of variability. In the present study, the estimate of PCV was higher than GCV indicating the important role of environment in the expression of the characters under study. The highest genotypic and phenotypic coefficient of variation observed for the traits number of branches per plant (PCV- 33.53 %, GCV-20.15 %), number of pods per plant ( PCV- 32.35 %, GCV-21.11 %), net plot yield( PCV- 36.36 %, GCV-27.27 %) and seed yield per plant (PCV- 31.67 %, GCV-22.30 %) which indicates selection can be applied on these traits to isolate more promising line. The broad sense heritability was lower to higher for all the traits ranged from days to 50% flowering (20.02%) to days to maturity (75.87 %) while high genetic advance was recorded in all traits under study except, days to 50% flowering (2.99 %) and days to maturity (9.47 %).Among all the characters, high heritability along with high genetic advance as percent of mean was observed for plant height and net yield indicating predominance of additive gene action and a limited role of environment in the expression of these traits. Hence, these traits are fixable in nature and selection on the basis of these traits would be effective. Correlation studies indicated that number of branches/plot, number of pods/plant, net yield/plot, 100 seed weight and number of nodes/plant had significant and positive correlation with seed yield/plant.