Genetic diversity among Brazilian soybean cultivars based on SSR loci and pedigree data

Abstract

In this study, simple sequence repeats (SSR) loci and pedigree data were used to investigate the genetic relationship in a group of 168 Brazilian soybean cultivars. Eighteen SSR loci produced an average of 5.06 alleles and a mean gene diversity of 0.58 for the cultivars studied. Genetic distance (GD) was determined using the modified Roger's Wright distance, and a final dendrogram was in agreement with the cultivar pedigree. A distance matrix based on the coefficient of parentage scores was also generated for the cultivars, which ranged from 0 to 1, with a mean of 0.18, whereas SSR-based genetic similarity (1- GD) ranged from 0.01 to 0.90, with a mean of 0.25. Mantel's Z test showed that the similarity matrices generated from both the data sets were low, but significantly correlated (r = 0.31, p<0.001). The results showed that SSR data and pedigree analyses could help to quantify more accurately the degree of relationship among the soybean cultivars.