Genetic aspects of the time to flowering in natural variants of soybean

Abstract

The parents and F₂ generations of a diallel cross with soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) cultivar Paraná and its natural variants Paranagoiana, SS-1, and Pirapó 78 were studied with the objective of expanding the available knowledge on the genetic mechanisms of the time to flowering in soybean. Data were obtained under field conditions with photoperiod varying from 13 hours and 31 minutes, at planting date, to a maximum of 14 hours and 23 minutes, 59 days afterwards. No presence of epistasis was found in trait determination. The main component of genetic variation was additive. The results showed that the delay in initial flowering was determined by recessive alleles. The alleles conditioning earliness were partially dominant. Broad and narrow sense heritabilities were 99.68% and 89.96%, respectively.The genetic information presented on the time to flowering, if evaluated jointly with the results obtained by other investigators, indicated that the type of inheritance is more dependent on the genotypes considered than on a specific photoperiodic band.