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INVESTIGATION  AND  COMPARISON  OF  SOME MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS OF THE SOYBEAN POPULATIONS USING CLUSTER ANALYSIS

M. FAISAL ANWAR MALIK¹, MUHAMMAD ASHRAF², AFSARI S. QURESHI¹ AND MUHAMMAD RASHID KHAN¹

Abstract: A study was performed on 92 genotypes of soybean including 4 checks during the Kharif season (July-Oct) of 2003. High values of the Shannon index for flower colour (0.54), pod colour (1.12), plant type (0.88), seed luster (0.84), seed size (1.08) and seed colour (0.91) revealed greater variability in these qualitative traits. High CVs were recorded in leaf area (44.81%), pods plant^-1 (29.47%), branches plant^-1 (31.72%), 100-seed weight (39.01%) and grain yield plant^-1 (46.55%) with a wide range of 28-146, 26-130, 2.4-11, 4.2-21.5 and 4.04-28.23 respectively indicating a high level of diversity among the accessions for these traits. Grain yield was positively and highly significantly correlated with leaf area, plant height, pods plant^-1, branches plant^-1 and 100-seed weight suggesting thereby that phenotypic selection could be made on the basis of these characters. Means of the clusters showed that the accessions in cluster III were not only late maturing and high yielding but also had more pods plant^-1, branches plant^-1 and 100-seed weight. However, accessions in cluster I showed some promise to earliness with high grain yield and oil. The physical distinctness, on the basis of cluster analysis, between Pakistani and US/AVRDC accessions in this study reflect that the introgression of US and AVRDC accessions to Pakistani breeding programme should broaden Pakistani soybean germplasm diversity. Whereas no clear relationship was found between genetic diversity and geographical origins because accessions from one origin entered into more than one cluster.

¹Department of Biochemistry, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

²National Agricultural Research Centre, Islamabad.