Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

H. NIESSL, J. VOLLMANN and P. RUCKENBAUER:

Selection for time to maturity in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) and seed protein content of early maturing genotypes

Summary

F2-derived families from five different crosses between soybean genotypes of maturity groups 0 to 000 were evaluated for time to maturity in the Fa-generation. Transgressions over the earlier parent's maturity were observed in all populations. Broad sense heritability of time to maturity was moderately high with estimates ranging between 0.70 and 0.94. Selection for early maturity was eff ec tive both on individual plant and family basis, although late segregants could not be excluded completely by one generation of selection. A realised heritability of 0.66 was obtained after selection for earliness in single plants of the F2-generation, which indicates that selection for time to maturity can be practised during early generations of a pedigree breeding program. After selection for early maturity, variation in seed protein content was low between families within populations, whereas significant differences in protein content were found between the crosses investigated. Key-words: Glycine max, soybean, time to maturity, heritability, seed protein content.