Caspian, a soybean cultivar suitable for summer cropping in the moderateswarm and humid regions of north part of Iran

To achive soybean varieties with high performance and the proper growth length, Telar cultivar was crossed with different soybean varieties including Hill, in 1992. Evaluation of the generation, segregatings generations of different populations was done during 1993-1998. During 1999-2007, pure lines from different families were evaluated in the preliminary and advance yield trials and then were compared with commercial cultivars in the uniform regional trials. The superior soybean lines were compared with the local checks in agronomy tests and also on-farm trials. In total, line 033(Caspian) with yieled of 3650 kgha-1 had better yieled compared to Hill and Sahar varieties and its resistance to charcoal rot disease of soybean was as same as commercial varieties. In addition to the high performance, Caspian cultivar had some appropriate agronomic characteristics such as high growth rate, proper height and distance of the first pod from the ground surface, which makes it possible for harvesting this cultivar by combine, resistance to lodging and shatering, drough tolerance, resistance to charcol rot disease , hence itwas recommended to be replaced with Hill cultivar for summer cropping in northern regions of Iran. Line 033 was released as Caspian based on confirmation of variety Release Committe of Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization.