Inheritance of yield and yield components in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill.)

The present investigation was undertaken to study the genetics of yield and yield components in soybean through generation mean analysis. Three crosses viz., MACS-450 × Monetta, DS-9712 × Kalitur and MACS-450 × Kalitur were made involving four parents during kharif 2013 to study the gene action for ten characters in soybean. Six generations (P 1 , P 2 , F 1 , F 2 , B 1 and B 2 ) were obtained by intermating diverse parents. Dominant gene action was observed in the inheritance of yield and yield contributing characters viz ., number of pod per plant, 100 seed weight and yield per plant. Both additive and non-additive gene effects were significantly involved in the expression of number of pods per plant (cross II), number of clusters per plant (cross II and III) and all three crosses expressed duplicate epistasis for yield per plant. Bi-parental mating design may be used to improve these characters. Complementary epistasis was observed for the cross Kalitur × DS-9712 for plant height (cm) and cross Kalitur × MACS 450 for number of pods per plant, which suggested that the selection will be practiced in F 3 generation onwards for improvement of these characters.