Genetic Diversity and Character Association for Yield and Yield RelatedTraits in Soybean (Glycine Max L.) Genotypes

The objectives of the study were to evaluate genetic diversity, heritability and genetic advance of traits in soybean genotypes and to estimate the magnitudes of associations among the different traits. The experiment was carried out at Uke Research Site, Western Ethiopia during 2018 main cropping season. The materials consisted of 100 soybean genotypes and was laid out in10*10 simple lattice design. Agronomic traits were collected and statistical analysis was carried out using GLM procedure of SAS (SAS, 2004). The results showed that there were highly significant differences among the genotypes for all the traits except for number of primary branches per plant and number of nodules per plant. High genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variations (greater than 15%) were observed for number of primary branches per plant, number of pods per plant, biological yield and seed yield. Higher values of broad sense heritability estimates (greater than 60%) coupled with higher values of GAM (greater than 20%) were observed for days to50% emergence, grain filling period, biological yield, and seed yield indicating the possibility of the traits controlled by additive gene types and phenotypic selection for the traits could be useful. Both at genotypic and phenotypic levels, seed yield was highly and positively correlated with days to 95% maturity, plant height, number of primary branches per plant, number of pods per plant, biological yield and harvest index. Hence, indirect selection using these traits might improve the seed yield in present soybean populations. D2 statistics showed that the genotypes were clustered in to 10 diverse groups, indicating further genetic diversity in the genotypes. The principal component analysis revealed that the first four PCA have accounted for 61.96% of the total variation among the genotypes. In conclusion, there is sufficient genetic variability among the soybean genotypes which could be used for selection based on phenotypes or use for parental stocks for crossing program.