CHARACTER ASSOCIATION AND DIVERSITY ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT GENOTYPES OF SOYBEAN (Glycine max L Merr.)

Abstract

An experiment was executed with 36 (Thirty six) soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) genotypes at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University by the period from December 2020 to April 2021, Salna, Gazipur. The aim of this study is to find the genetic variability, correlation and path coefficient analysis, for detecting the genetically diverse parents with elite agronomic performance and to find out the characters accountable for genetic divergence. The analysis of variance showed highly significant differences among the mean values for all traits. 36 (Thirty six) soybean genotypes for all the estimated traits shown high heritability, high to low genetic advance along with high to moderate GA%. This finding indicated that those traits were governed by additive gene so selection might be useful. As per the experiment number of branches/plant (0.08), number of nodes/plant (0.31), number of seeds/plant (0.07), 100 seed weight (g) (0.16) and seed yield/plant (0.45) were the important characters accountable for genetic divergence. Among the 6 (six) clusters, the highest inter cluster distance was observed between in cluster I and cluster VI (20.01) and the lowest between cluster V and cluster VI. For the highest seed yield/plant G1, along with the other genotypes belonging cluster III (G8, G13, G33) will be worthwhile selection for future crop improvement program.