Characterization and Evaluation of Some Genotypes of Soybean [(Glycine max (L.) Merrill] under Acidic Soil Condition in Meghalaya, India

In the world scenario, although soybean is considered an important oilseed crop with India holding 5th position by contributing about 3.95% share in it’s total production, its production in north-eastern region of India especially in Meghalaya is quite less due to its acidic soil condition. With the highlight of the above fact, the present research was conducted using 40 different soybean genotypes from different regions in the country. At different growth stages of the plant, 22 DUS characters and 12 quantitative characters were recorded. Analysis of variance gave highest significant value for number of seeds per plant succeeded by number of pods per plant and the lowest was found for number of seeds per pod and primary branch per plant. Studying the correlation analysis of the agronomic traits, seed yield per plant was showing positively correlation with characters number of seeds per pod, number of pods per plant, 50% flowering, plant height, days to maturity, primary branch per plant and protein content while characters like number of seeds per pods, number of pods per cluster and100 seed weight was found non-significant. The highest yield was found in the genotype TS-53 followed by SKF-SPS-11 and MACS-1493. Lowest yielder genotypes are MACS-1575 followed by NRC-130. Genotype CSB-10112 had the highest protein content(45.1%) and genotype NRC-131 was found to have highest oil content(20.1%). Clustering of genotypes for studying genetic diversity was performed by Tocher’s method of D2 analysis. A total of 9 clusters was formed with cluster I having 23 genotypes, cluster II with 4 genotypes, cluster III with 3 genotypes, cluster IV with 5 genotypes while cluster V, VI, VII, VIII and IX did not fall in any cluster. With these findings, it will be useful for breeders to further undergo molecular level studies to find out the gene responsible for tolerance. Thus, breeders can use the characters which were more positively correlated with yield for crop improvement work and the diverse parents could be used for hybridization program.