Comprehensive assessment of soybean cultivars of world breeding in the conditions of Northern Kazakhstan

The article presents the results of a comprehensive assessment of 150 soybean cultivars of various ecological and geographical origins from a collection nursery, obtained in 2021 and 2022 on the basis of the breeding station of the S.Seifullin KATU in the conditions of the dry-steppe zone of Northern Kazakhstan. The years of research were characterized as acutely arid. For the conditions of the sharply continental climate of Northern Kazakhstan, the main limiting factor for soybean is precocity. As a result of the research, a promising soybean breeding material with a set of specified characteristics was identified in order to use them in the further breeding process: 104 cultivars with a short growing season; 38 - with the largest number of beans. The highest positive correlation was established between the yield and the number of beans per plant (r = 0.58), the height of attachment of the lower bean (r = 0.40), the number of productive nodes (r = 0.58), the number of seeds in the bean (r = 0.55), the weight of 1000 seeds (r = 0.56) and the weight of seeds per a bean (r = 0.45). A number of soybean cultivars with a relatively high yield, seed quality and precocity have been identified. The yield of the studied soybean cultivars varied from 3.6 to 11.2 quintal/ha (standard - 9.0 quintal/ha). On average, for two years, the highest yield (from 9.1 to 10.1 quintal/ha) was formed by Chinese cultivars: LongKen 310, Beidou 43, Heihe 43, Huajiong 2. The standard cultivar Ivushka was characterized with the highest protein and oil contents in the experiment - 41.06 and 19.03%, respectively.