For a targeted search of initial breeding material for the quality of soybean seeds, it is necessary to know the patterns of the dependence of the corresponding seed characters on the weather and climatic conditions in a particular region. Global climatic change, the concretization of which is relevant, has a share in this dependence. Thus, the aim of this work was to identify the relationship between the variability of protein and oil content in soybean seeds with climatic parameters in the North Caucasus as well as trends in this variability over a long time period. The study of 1 442 soybean accessions from VIR collection in the Krasnodar region during 1987–2015 had been carried out and the tendencies of the variability of protein and oil content in seeds in this environment were estimated. The regression analysis in differences with forward stepwise selection of variables has been used to construct models for the dependence of the protein and oil content on generalized agrometeorological indices. During 1987–2015, for the period with temperatures above 10 °C, the sums of active temperatures increased by 218 °C/10 years and precipitation decreased by 20.9 mm/10 years. In the dynamics of protein content, a trend has been revealed as an increase by 2.5 % over 10 years, while there is no reliable trend in oil content. The maximum average mean of oil content and the smallest protein were in the middle-maturing accessions (22.2 and 38.8 %), and a relatively high protein content was detected, on average, in the early- (21.6 and 40.0 %) and late-maturing (20.2 and 39.9 %) varieties. The protein content had been increasing with a growth of the duration of the period with temperatures above 22 °C and decreasing with a raise in precipitation over a period of temperatures above 18 °C. The accumulation of oil in seeds was promoted by an increase of the hydrothermal coefficient over the period with temperatures above 19 °C, and, in late-maturating varieties, prevented by a prolonged autumn period with temperatures below 15 °C. Long-term growth in protein content is due to both climatic change and genetic improvement of varieties.

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Soybean is a strategic crop of multipurpose use. Production and consumption of soybeans are increasing year by year, with new uses appeared. Soybean can become one of the key plants in bioeconomics. Food, fodder, technical, medical and pharmaceutical use of soybeans is diversified and requires specialized varieties with the target traits. This poses new challenges for breeders and, accordingly, for holders of germplasm collections that supply source material for breeding. VIR soybean collection for many years serves as a genetic source for breeding. Based on long-term phenotyping, the accessions are systematized by a number of traits. Rapid development of new molecular technologies, e.g. marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic breeding are targeted to optimize both creation of new varieties and searching for the necessary genotypes. A number of agronomically important quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been found for soybean (Y.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), a grain legume crop, is considered innovative for the Russian Federation. Over the past fifteen years, its area in our country have increased 20 times and reached 420,300 hectares in 2015. The growing demand of chickpea determines the necessity of breeding new varieties. One of the ways to improve the crop could be the introgression of genes from old landraces, especially those from the regions of species genetic diversity, the centers of its origin (i.e. the primary in Turkey and the secondary in Ethiopia). In this paper the question is raised about the diversity and phenotypic differences of the chickpea gene pool growing in the centers of origin about a century ago and preserved in VIR collection. Here, we first showed the differences in the phenotypic characteristics of the oldest chickpeas from two centers of origin. Fifteen morphological, phenological and agronomic features were studied in 75 local varieties from Turkey and 24 ones from Ethiopia. Both in Turkish and in Ethiopian samples, the most variable signs were the number of seeds per plant (Cv 62.6 and 70.4 %, respectively) and the number of beans per plant (Cv 62.2 and 63.0 %). Principal component analysis showed that the first five factors determined 78.9 % of the total variability of traits. Factor 2 (22.0 % of the variance) can be called a factor of potential seed production. Correlation analysis revealed a much stronger relationships between all the traits studied in the Ethiopian samples. The correlation between seed production and vegetation period were the strongest (r  0.9). We have revealed association of certain traits of chickpea plants with the geographical zones of the sample origins. Landraces from Ethiopia are fairly homogeneous and have small, dark and angular seeds, low attachment of the first bean and low seed productivity, are more early maturated compared with the Turkish ones. Turkish landraces are characterized by a great variety of all the traits studied, revealing all their grades described in the chickpea descriptors. In this region, the landraces typical of the western Mediterranean, as well as for territories bordering Turkey in the east had been grown. The structure of the variability and the strength of the relations of the traits differed in the landraces from the primary and secondary centers. It is obvious that in plants growing in different ecological and geographical environment, there is a specific communications between the traits, reflecting the presence of different blocks of co-adapted genes or another integrated gene complexes that determine adaptation to a particular environment. Useful characters for breeding are found in landraces from both centers of origin and chickpea diversity.