Phenotypic and molecular traits diversity in soybean launched in forty years of genetic breeding

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the diversity of phenotypic and molecular traits in soybean cultivars launched in forty years of breeding.The DNA was amplified with 42 microsatellite markers (SSR).Polymorphisms of 38 SSR markers were identified in polyacrylamide gel at 10%.106 alleles were amplified with an average of 2.52 alleles per SSR locus.Polymorphism information content varied from 0 to 0.68 with an average of 0.38.Genetic dissimilarities between pairs of cultivars varied from 0.4 to 0.6, 0.8 to 1.0 and 0.0 to 0.4 for data obtained from SSR markers, coefficient of parentage and phenotypic characters, respectively.It was possible to verify the contribution of cultivars considered old, intermediate and recent as well as the genetic variability of the group of cultivars used, which remained the same over 40 years of breeding.It was also observed that, with the combination of six microsatellite primers, it was possible to distinguish the 21 cultivars used in this study; and that microsatellite markers showed less biased estimates compared to the estimates obtained by the parentage coefficient and phenotypic characters in studies on genetic diversity.