Assessment of Genetic Variability, Heritability and Genetic Advance in Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) Genotypes at Assosa, Western Ethiopia

Background and Objective: Soybean is a highly nutritious diet that can play a major role in the human body, but soybean production in Ethiopia faces challenges like pests and diseases, limited to improved seeds, resulting in low productivity, Hence, this experiment assessed the genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance in soybean genotypes. Materials and Methods: The 49 soybean genotypes were evaluated using a simple lattice design with two replications at Assosa Agricultural Research Center during the main cropping season of 2020/21. The various agronomic characteristics of days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of pods, number of seeds, fresh weight of biomass (g), dry weight of the plant (g), pod length (cm), number of nodules per plant, oil content (percentage) content, 100 seed weight (g) and grain yield were recorded using random sampling techniques. Results: The phenotypic coefficients of variation ranged from 8.7 to 46.21% and the genotypic coefficients from 6.92 to 32.94%. Traits like yield, biomass weight, plant height and seed count showed high heritability and genetic advancement, suggesting potential for improvement through selection. Cluster analysis identified five groups, with the largest distance between Clusters 2 and 5 and the smallest between Clusters 1 and 3. Clusters III and IV had the highest intra-cluster distances. The first five principal components explained 79% of the total variation. Conclusion: The research revealed that there was adequate variability among the genotypes studied, as well as the possibility of increasing grain and oil yield by selecting superior genotypes. As a result, pre-breeding practices could be made among sub-clusters and between distant clusters to generate further variability.