Heritability and correlation in F₂ soybean plants cultivated under different environmental conditions

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out in Viçosa, MG, with the purpose of estimating the broad sense heritabilities and the correlations of some characters of agronomic interest in F₂ soybean (Glycine max (L) Merrill) plants from the crossing of strain TN (null triple - absent lipoxygenases) and cultivar IAC-12. The highest heritability was observed for the characters related to the vegetative growth and seed weight per plant indicating that they were less sensitive to the environment and therefore of easier selection starting from the first segregating generations. Number of pods and number of seeds per plant presented low heritability coefficients thus decreasing the efficiency of individual-based selection. High and positive genotypic correlations were observed between all the pairs of characters evaluated on field, indicating the possibility of obtaining indirect gains through the selection of high heritability characters. Some genotypic correlations, estimated in greenhouse, were of low value