ABSTRACT

An investigation was carried out to elucidate nature and extent of genetic variability, trait association, genetic diversity and marker- trait association studies for productivity traits in soybean using 288 germplasm lines and molecular markers.
Genotypes exhibited significant variability for seed yield and component traits. The traits viz., plant height, number of pods per plant, seed yield per plant and number of branches per plant exhibited higher phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation with high heritability and genetic advance as per cent of mean. Number of pods per plant had significant positive correlation and highest positive direct effect with seed yield followed by plant height and days to maturity. Two hundred and eighty-eight genotypes were grouped into 11 clusters with cluster I having highest number of genotypes (197). High intra cluster distance in Cluster VII and inter cluster distance between and VII and XI revealed higher diversity among the genotypes in these clusters. Plant height and number of pods per plant contributed maximum towards genetic divergence.
The generalised linear model based marker trait association indicated that the markers DTSNP185, DTSNP1181, TOF12SNP5520945, PH1m19dt4292199, GRL1ss107926039, DTSNP1288, E2SNP15056 and Gm10SWs107913588 were significantly associated (P <0.01) with different yield attributing traits. KASP marker, DTSNP185 and SSR marker, BARCSOYSSR_12_1282 were significantly (r2>10%) associated with 100 seed weight explaining phenotypic variation of 20.77% and 14.83% respectively based on single marker analysis. In the present study, EC 528622, EC 528623 and NRC 7 were identified as potential genotypes with higher yield, number of pods per plant, early flowering and maturity which can be used in crop improvement program.