1Department of Crop Science, School of Agricultural Sciences, College of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, University of Juba, P.O. Box 82, Juba, South Sudan, ORCID: 0000-0003-3239-8431
2School of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 210-40601, Bondo, Kenya, ORCID: 0000-0002-7223-7838
3International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, PMB 5320, Oyo Road, 200001, Ibadan, Nigeria, ORCID: 0000-0003-1004-2450
*Corresponding Author: S. Meseka, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, PMB 5320, Oyo Road, 200001, Ibadan, Nigeria, Email: s.meseka@cgiar.org, ORCID: 0000-0003-1004-2450.
Online published on 31 July, 2023.
The challenge to food security posed by climate change and coupled with the substantial rise in the global population, necessitate a shift in crop improvement programmes towards developing crop cultivars with stable and high yield potentials across a wide range of agro-ecological conditions.
New high yielding crop varieties with stable performance across environments are enabling the expansion of their production area into non-traditional environments with semi-arid climates. Soybean (Glycine max L.), a tropical leguminous crop, has received significant attention as a target crop in breeding programmes for adaptation to semi-arid environments, due to its low water content, high nutritive value and the capacity to produce a variety of products. The objective of this study was to asses yield performance and stability of promising soybean genotypes under contrasting environments in the semi-arid zone of Sudan. We evaluated five soybean genotypes using a split plot design with environment as the main plot and genotype as the subplot.
Combined ANOVA showed significant differences among the genotypes, environment and genotype x environment interaction. Moreover, significant positive relationships were observed between seed yield and number of days to 95% flowering, 100-seed weight, leaf area and number of pods per plant. AMMI stability values revealed significant differences among the genotypes and genotype-by-environment main effects for seed yield. Similarly, results of GGE biplot showed significant contributions of genotypes and genotype-by-environment main effects. The stability models enabled us to identify genotypes with superior performance to specific environments. TGX 1904-6F, was found to be the most stable genotype with appreciable seed yield and adaptability across all environments that can be recommended for release to farmers in semi-arid Sudan.
AMMI, GGE biplot, Glycine max
