Soybean breeding at the Plant Breeding and Genetics Institute of Odesa, Ukraine: results and prospects
As a result of global warming, the steppe zone of Ukraine is gradually increasing day and night temperatures, and there are sharp fluctuations in the amount of precipitation during the vegetation period of plants, which leads to different durations of droughts. Studies indicate that in the future the negative impact of environmental factors will increase. It is possible to counteract this by creating and introducing into production highly adaptive varieties that are well adapted to zonal cultivation technologies and are able to tolerate abiotic stresses with minimal yield losses. Our research is aimed at developing soybean varieties of this type. At the first stage, through field research from the world gene pool (more than 5000 genotypes), the most important sources of economically valuable traits were identified, which formed the basis of the core collection. Most of these genotypes came from the Far East of Russia, China, the USA, and Canada. The second stage of the research consisted in grouping the selected genotypes using the cluster analysis method to select parental components for crossing. Parental pairs were selected based on maturity, combinative ability, productivity, and genetic divergence. The success rate of manual crossings was about 1%. The use of genetic male sterility allowed an increase in the amount of hybrid forms by six times, which helped improve the efficiency of the breeding process of soybean. As a result of many years of work, more than 40 soybean varieties were created and entered into the state register of Ukraine, the yield of which under optimal conditions is at the level of 4 t/ha. The results obtained indicate the possibility of combining increased yield and a complex of adaptive traits through selection.