Identification of Stable and Drought-Tolerant Soybean Cultivars using AMMI and GGE Biplot Analysis

The soybean genotype's stability and high performance are essential factors for long-term development and food security. That the occurrence of various stresses, including drought stress, can cause high losses in the production and supply of this product. This factor has caused the wide attention of researchers to evaluate the stable and tolerant genotypes to drought stress in different environments to introduce the best variety.

This research investigated the interaction effects of G × E on yield stability in 12 soybean genotypes in four different northern Iran environments. This experiment was conducted as a randomized complete block design with three replications in each environment. During several harvests, yield component traits such as plant height, number of pods, number of seeds per pod, the weight of 1000 seeds, biological yield, harvest index, seed yield, oil percentage, oil yield, and seed protein content were evaluated in 1400 and 1401. Stability tests for multivariate stability parameters were performed based on AMMI and GGE biplot analysis.

Among the investigated cultivars, the Sari variety had the highest yield in all three studied regions, and the Hill variety had the lowest yield among the cultivars. The variety Sari in the two environments of Karakhil and Kapik and the varieties Tapur and SBA2 were more compatible with the Bai-Kola region than the rest of the varieties. Sari, Tapur, Caspian, and SBA3 cultivars were in this range. And Telar, Nekader, SBA2, and SBA4 cultivars are in the field of TOL and SSI indices, these cultivars were also identified as drought-sensitive cultivars.

In addition to yield stability in the two regions, the Sari variety was tolerant to drought stress and had a higher yield than the rest of the studied varieties. This variety has drought-tolerance genes and is the best parent for transferring these genes. Based on the results of cluster analysis, Hill and SBA6 cultivars had the furthest distance from SBA2. The best parents to improve the generation are crossed to create a diverse population to produce superior cultivars or genotypes.