Heterosis in Soybean

Seventeen F1’s involving eight promising soybean varieties were studied to find out the extent and nature of heterosis. The better parent heterosis for seed yield ranged from -30.3% to 67.8% with a mean heterosis of 26.1%. The two primary yield components viz. seeds per plant and pods per plant also showed considerable better parent heterosis, but this was negative for seeds per pod and seed size. Hybrids Bragg × Clark-63 and Hardee × Punjab-1 exhibited maximum heterosis for seed yield, the value for which were 67.8 and 51.5% respectively.