Genomic variation studies in Glycine max and Glycine soja using SSR markers.

Abstract

Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] is an important source of edible oil and nutri-tious food worldwide. In India, it is the most important oilseed crop occupying an area of about 10.84mha with an average production and productivity of 14.66mt and 1353kg/ha respectively,during 2013–14 (http://www.agricoop.nic.in). However, yield of soybean in India is lower than the global average (2.5t/ha). Low genetic diversity among Indian soybean germplasm, devoid of genetic resources in gene pool-2 (GP-2), various biotic and abiotic stresses, use of limited germplasm lines in breeding pro-grammes, little or no use of wild-type germplasm in breeding, are some of the factors for lower yield in India. Genetic improvement, agronomic management and effective plant protection approaches are keys to increased soybean yield.However, yield is a complex, quantita-tive trait and is governed by quantitative trait loci or QTL. Therefore, for intro-gression of useful QTL from wild spe-cies, crosses were made between G.maxand Glycine soja,and advanced segregat-ing generation (F6) has been developed. The specific objective of this work was to study the genetic relations and level of polymorphism between G.max and G. soja, and identifying polymorphic simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. The ge-nomic information and polymorphic markers identified in this study would be useful in analysing and apping QTL for yield and other important traits Genomic variation studies in Glycine max and Glycine soja using SSR markers.