Implications of the population effect in the selection of soybean progeny

Abstract

The goal of this study was to verify the influence of the population effect in theestimates of genetic and phenotypic components and to identify the best soybeanprogeny or lines in a commercial soybean breeding programme. We evaluated 292populations for grain yield and absolute maturity during three agricultural years. Toquantify the efficiency of the inclusion of the population’s effect in the model, weestimated genetic gain with the selection, the Spearman’s correlation, the coinci-dence index, the realized gain and correlated response of selected genotypes withand without the effect of the population. It was found that the variance compo-nents, heritability and coefficient of experimental variation were better estimatedwhen the effect of the population was included, providing greater gain with selec-tion for grain yield and absolute maturity. Coincidence and ranking among theselected progeny with and without the effect of the population are of greater mag-nitude in more advanced inbreeding generations and at higher percentage ofselected progeny. The use of the population effect has greater importance in earliergenerations of inbreeding.