The Seed-Seedling Transition in Commercial Soybean Cultivars with the Presence of Greenish Seeds in the Sample: A Perspective from Classical Genetic Parameters

Chlorophyll retention reduces the quality of soybean grain and seeds, but little is known about the relationship between this anomaly and the seed-seedling transition or classical genetic breeding. Taking this into account, we provide a new perspective about how greenish seeds are associated with genetic material. For that, we used seed-seedling transition measurements of nine commercial cultivars cultivated by different seed farmers. Our findings demonstrated that: (i) The anomaly of greening in soybean seeds seems to be more expressed as a function of thermal variation than rainfall; (ii) There are commercial cultivars with distinct sensitivity to the greening phenotype, indicating potential for classical breeding for the species; (iii) The seed-seedling transition is significantly modified by the presence of greenish seeds, and the diagnosis of their presence can be anticipated by the analysis of embryo protrusion.