Agronomic Potential and Genetic Diversity of 43 Accession of Tropical Soybean (Glycine max (L) Merrill)

Nigeria is the largest producer of soya bean in sub-Sahara Africa, there is however paucity of information on genetic diversity available for the crop's improvement. Forty-three accessions of soya bean were evaluated to assess diversity. Variation among the accessions were analyzed from thirteen agro-morphological characters using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) during the late cropping season of 2015. The experiment was conducted at the Research Farm of the National Center for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology, Ibadan. The first four principal components (PC) accounted for 70% of the total variation, while the first and second PC contributed 27% and 22% respectively. Characters found in PC1 accounted for most of the observed variation. High heritability and genetic advance estimates were recorded for most of the traits and the 43 accessions were assigned to nine distinct clusters by FASTCLUS indicative of wide genetic diversity. Configuration of PC1 and PC2 indicated that TGm-868 and TGm-863 were most distinct and can be utilized as parents for hybridization