AGRO-MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND EVALUATION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY USING MICROSATALLITE MARKERS FOR SOME SOYBEAN GENOTYPES

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Legumes Dept., Filed Crops Res. Inst., Agric. Res. Cent., (ARC) Egypt

2 Seed Technol. Dept., Filed Crops Res. Inst., Agric. Res. Cent., (ARC) Egypt

Abstract

Genetic diversity of cultivated soybean {Glycine max (L.) Merrill} 2n = 40 is very narrow, although includes diversity for many obvious morphological traits. A field experiment was conducted to study characterize of fifteen soybean genotypes on agro-morphological trait basis and to identify genetic diversity using SDS-PAGE, with resistance to defoliating insects, at Sakha Agricultural Research Station, Kafr ElShiekh, Egypt during 2017 and 2018 seasons,. Morphological description was performed with 10 qualitative and 7 quantitative traits and screening for defoliation by cotton leaf worm in the open field. The results exhibited significant differences among the tested fifteen genotypes for all studied characters. Defoliation of test plants by the cotton leaf worm, in the field screenings system showed that genotypes H14 L8, H1 L10S, H1 L10 and H10 L10 recorded the highest rating values of insect resistant to cotton leaf worm with defoliation rating (0.0 – 0.2), whereas, soybean genotype H5 L21 showed the highest insect susceptible and had defoliation rating (3.8) indicating heavy insect feeding, over both seasons. Genotypes H11 L145 and H14L8 recorded the highest values of seed yield/fad., this attributed to the considerable increase in their number of branches/plant, number of pods/plant, and 100-seed weight, in both seasons. This indicates that such genotypes are the promising ones. The protein identification indicated that the pattern was uniform where each genotype was not affected by year or location. The soybean genotypes were different in their banding pattern and each one is characterized by certain proteins with different molecular weight. Cluster analysis based on qualitative morphological characters showed clear separation of genotypes on the basis of their plant growth habit.

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