Genetic divergence in soybean parents for backcrossing programs

Abstract

Parents are generally selected for their performance and genetic divergence. The selection of the genetically closer plants to the recurrent parent reduces the number of backcrossings required to recover the genome. Our study aimed at the selection of plants genetically closer to each other for backcrossings. Nine soybean genotypes with a normal protein content and 18 high protein donor lines of the Breeding program of the BIOAGRO/UFV were evaluated with 57 pairs of primer microsatellites. The genetic distances (GD) varied from 0.08 to 0.74 and allowed the identification of the closest genotypes. These were clustered according to their GD by the UPGMA (five groups), Single Linkage (six groups) and Tocher methods (nine groups). The donor genotypes closer to the recurrent parent were chosen to reduce the number of backcrossings needed to achieve high protein, productive soybean lines.