Research Article Inheritance of pod shattering in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill)

Three parents viz., NRC7, EC 241780 and Kalitur were crossed in cyclic manner during Kharif 2012 with the objectives to study the inheritance of pod shattering in soybean. Among these NRC 7 and others were resistant and susceptible to pod shattering respectively. Six generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, B1 and B2) were obtained by inter-mating three diverse parents. Pod shattering screening was done as per oven dry method. Inheritance of pod shattering was found to be governed by partial dominance of susceptibility over the resistance. Two major genes with inhibitory epistasis were involved in inheritance of pod shattering in soybean as evidenced from F2 ratio (13:3) and confirmed by test cross ratio (3:1) in resistance x susceptible and susceptible x resistance crosses. Keyword Soybean, pod shattering, inheritance, inhibitory epistasis