Thursday, November 16, 2006 - 10:15 AM
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Soybean QTL for Yield and Yield Components Associated with Glycine soja Alleles.

Dandan Li, University of Kentucky, 310 Plant Science Building 0312, Lexington, KY 40546 and Todd Pfeiffer, 329 Plant Science Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0312.

USA soybean germplasm has a narrow genetic base that could be augmented by alleles from the wild species Glycine soja which positively influence agronomic traits. The objective of this study was to identify such alleles for yield and yield component QTL.  Two populations of 150 BC2F4 lines were generated from a mating between recurrent parent Glycine max ‘7499’ and donor parent Glycine soja PI 245331 with one line in each population tracing back to the same BC2 plant. Population A was used for the QTL identification analysis and population B was used for the QTL verification test. The population A lines were genotyped at 120 SSR and one phenotypic marker loci, covering a total map length of 1506 cM in 20 linkage groups with an average interval size of 12.5 cM. There were nine putative QTL significantly (P<0.0001, LOD>3.0) associated with yield and yield component traits across 3 environments. One QTL for seed yield was identified using the combined data; the G. soja allele at satt511 on LG-A1 was associated with increased seed yield (LOD=4.3) with an additive yield effect of 190 – 235 kg ha-1 depending on the QTL analysis method. The phenotypic variance accounted for by the QTL at satt511 was 12%. This QTL also provided a significant yield increase across environments in the validation population.  Lines that were homozygous for the G. soja allele at satt511 demonstrated a 6.3% (P=0.037) yield increase over lines that were homozygous for the G. max allele. One seed filling period QTL was identified at satt335 (LOD=4.0) on LG-F with an additive effect of +1 day. This QTL also provided a +1 day additive effect (LOD=3.3) on maturity. These results demonstrate the potential of using exotic germplasm to improve soybean yield.