Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 8:30 AM
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Genetic Analysis of Quantitative Trait Loci Related to Seed Hardness in Soybean.

Bo Zhang, pengyin chen, Sandra Palacios, and Shenlong Zhu. Univ of Arkansas, 115 Plant Science, 115 Plant Science, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States of America

Soybean seeds with undesirable texture cause serious problems for soyfood production. Molecular markers for quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with seed hardness will facilitate the development of elite cultivars with proper hardness through marker-assisted selection. The objective of this study was to identify QTL associated with seed hardness in soybean. Three generations of F2 derived lines (179 F2:3 lines, 159 F2:4, and 159 F2:5 lines) from a high-calcium (‘Camp’) × low-calcium (‘SS-516’) soybean cross were grown in 2003, 2004, and 2005.  F2:3 lines were used for DNA extraction; F2:4 and F2:5 lines were evaluated for cooked-seed hardness with a Texture Analyzer TMS-2000 equipped with a shear cell. Significant variation and normal distribution were observed for seed hardness among lines in both generations. Broad-sense heritability of hardness was 0.40. A total of 177 simple sequences repeat (SSR) markers were mapped on 19 linkage groups (LG) spanning a total of 1421.8 cM. QTL locations and effects were compared between F2:4 and F2:5 generations. Detailed results will be presented.