Revealing the Yield and Quality Responses of Soybean Advanced Lines under Semi-Arid Conditions

Background: Soybean as human diet is a rich source of protein and oil. It also plays a vital role in livestock and poultry industries. Objective of this work is to exploit the local soybean germplasm for semi-arid conditions.: The experiment was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Plant x plant and row x row distance was maintained as 4 inch and 1ft respectively. At maturity data for plant height, days to 50% flowering, no. of branches, no. of pods, grains per pod and grain yield per hectare were recorded. Furthermore, oil percentage, protein percentage, omega-3, omega-6, omega-9, palmitic acid and stearic acids were also measured.Results: All genotypes showed highly significant difference from each other for selected traits. Grain yield per hectare was significant in genotypes such as CN-5, FS-10, E-402 and SH-1274 as compared to Faisal soybean (check). Protein and oil percentage were significantly more in CN-5, HS-17 and FS-10. Branches per plant significantly correlated with the yield but protein and oil percentage negatively correlated with each other. PCA indicated that only four out of 13 PCAs exhibited more than 1 Eigen value and showed 76.53 % variation. All traits for yield and quality were presented in PCA1, PCA2 and PCA3. Biplot indicated that genotype CN-5, SH-1274 and HB-17 falls in the positive portion that perform good.Conclusion: Soybean genotypes CN-5 and FS-10 showed the more yield with high protein and oil percentage as compared to check variety and could be used in semi-arid environments.