Selecting Drought Tolerant Early Set Soybean (Glycine max ) Genotype in Northwestern Ethiopia

Abstract

Soybean is an important crop for both human and livestock nutrition. However, its production and productivity are affected by biotic and abiotic stresses particularly drought stress is the main production limiting factor. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to investigate the impact of drought, identify soybean genotypes that exhibit tolerance to drought conditions for commercial production, and identify potential parental lines that can be utilized to enhance drought tolerance in soybean breeding programs. The experiment was simple lattice design in two separate field experiments for full irrigated (control) and drought stressed conditions. Analysis of variance revealed that there were highly significant differences in days to maturity, plant height, pod and seed per plant, hundred seed weight and seed yield under both conditions. In general, drought stress reduced days to maturity in 5.1%, plant height 13.38%, number of pods per plant 25.39%, seeds per pod 9.28%, hundred seed weight 4.75% and grain yield 33.46% in average. The level of yield reduction due to drought stress was reneged in between 2.49 % genotype Go-0391 to 62.85 % genotype AGS-214 which is 33.46 % in average. In the current study, G2, G17, G20, G21, G29, G6 and G35 were performed above the mean under both conditions and identified as high yielder and drought tolerant soybean genotypes. Whereas G1, G10, G12, G16, G24, G25, G26, G27, G28, and G30 genotypes were performed below the mean performance which are low yielder drought tolerant. Finally, we recommended TGx 1989-40F variety for commercial production in drought prone areas of Ethiopia as drought tolerant early.