Improvement of crop yield can be achievedthrough understanding genetic variation in reproductivecharacters and its impact on yield components. Thepresent study was performed to evaluate genetic diversityresources and to determine the relationships betweendevelopmental and growth periods with yield and yieldcomponents in soybean cultivar groups. For phenotypicevaluation such as reproductive and agronomic traits, atotal of 80 indigenous and exotic soybean cultivars col-lected from four different geographical regions (China,Japan, Korea, and Vietnam) were grown from May toNovember of 2003 at the Seoul National University Farm,Suwon, Korea (127o02’E longitude, 37o26N latitude).Most of all the characters exhibited wide range of pheno-typic variation, of which pod number, sed number, andplant yield showed greater range as compared to othercharacters. Korean cultivar groups showed greaterdiversity than the other cultivar groups in seven charac-ters. Corelation analysis showed that days to flowering(DTF) and days to maturity (DTM) had close associationwith agronomic traits as wel as yield and yield compo-the other characters except one hundred sed weight.Stepwise multiple linear regression revealed that seed andpod number were identified as being significant for plantyield. The results in this study indicated wide variation inagronomic traits including DTF and DTM, sugesting thevaluable genetic resources in a soybean breeding program.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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