The results of testing soybean accessions at Adler Experiment Station of VIR in 2013-2015

Background. We tested soybean accessions from the VIR collection. These accessions had not been tested earlier at any experiment station of VIR.

Materials and methods. The testing was carried out at the Black Sea Coast of the Caucasus. We tested 494 soybean accessions of various geographic origins. These accessions arrived to the VIR collection from 1922 to 1995. Our work was done according to VIR's methodological guidelines.

Results. Almost half of the accessions of various maturity groups manifested high seed productivity (> 30g per plant). There were no accessions with high seed productivity among the earliest maturity group (growing season of 81-90 days). Productivity was positively correlated with the duration of the growing season (r = 0.39). The weight of 1000 seeds varied from 60g to 500g and had no apparent connection with productivity. Elevated position of the lower bean is important for mechanized harvesting. Only in 27 accessions the lower bean was set higher than 12.1 cm. Among them, 23 accessions were very late-ripening, and only 2 matured within the season of up to 130 days. Accessions with high crude protein content in seeds (45.1-50.0%) were found in all maturity groups. Maximum oil content (24.1-26.0%) was registered only in the accessions whose growing season was from 91do 150 days. Accessions with the shortest (81-90 days) and longest (> 150 days) growing seasons did not contain much oil. High productivity was combined with high protein content in the early-ripening accession k-2341 from China (growing season of 101-110 days), late-ripening variety 'Morse' from the U.S. (141-50 days), 'Shhepis 2' from Georgia, 'Axagara' and 'Tou kichi 1' from Japan (>150 days). High productivity and high oil content were observed in the U.S. varieties 'Sherman' (121-130 days) and 'Ripley' (141- 150 days). The correlation between protein content and oil content was negative (r = -0.55). Full-scale characterization of the studied material has been published in The Catalogue of the global VIR collection, issue 855, 2018.

Conclusion. The conducted research helped to describe earlier untested materials in terms of their productivity and biological characteristics. Accessions with the best economic characteristics can be used in breeding practice to develop new soybean cultivars.

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