The 18 from MCC included all types of accessions except those with high oil content. The 18 accessions were randomly selected from IACC three times to assess its representativeness. AG14699 The average number of accessions with each desirable agronomic and nutritional trait was calculated from three independently selected sets (Table 6). The results showed that the distribution of the accessions with each desirable trait was similar to that of

the 18 accessions from MCC, indicating that the representativeness of the IACC was similar to that of MCC. The 141 accessions were also randomly selected three times from the full MCC. The average numbers of accessions with each desirable trait were all strikingly lower than those of accessions in IACC, except for accessions with cold tolerance (Table 6), indicating that few accessions with extremely desirable traits were present in MCC of soybean. Thus the development of IACC is favorable to the SB431542 purchase utilization of accessions with desirable traits. The phenotypic diversities of accessions in the newly formed IACC were also compared with those in MCC of soybean. The distribution of accessions

with each of the nine qualitative phenotypic traits in IACC was similar to that in MCC, with no significant difference by chi-square test (Table 7). The means, standard deviations, and coefficient of variations of five quantitative phenotypic traits were also similar to those of MCC. Z-tests showed that 100-seed weight, protein content and fat content had no significant difference between these two collections, whereas differences in growth duration and plant height were significant (P < 0.05). The genetic diversity of soybean accessions in the newly formed IACC was also compared with that of MCC by random sampling, the same strategy as used for comparison of phenotype (Table 8). The test also used 18 accessions randomly selected from the whole sample and 141 accessions randomly selected from MCC collection. All the random selections were performed three times and the means of the genetic diversity indices were calculated. The results showed that the mean allele number, gene diversity, observed

Carnitine palmitoyltransferase II heterozygosity, and PIC-value of 18 randomly selected accessions were similar to those of 18 accessions from MCC, indicating that the IACC was similarly representative to the MCC at the molecular level. As with the analysis of the desirable traits, the mean allele number, gene diversity, hererozygosity, and PIC-value of 141 randomly selected accessions were different from those of 141 accessions not included in the MCC but included in the IACC of soybean. These results were consistent with the different numbers of soybean accessions with desirable traits in IACC and MCC. The main tasks for soybean breeders worldwide are expanding the genetic background of crossing parents, discovering desirable alleles, and improving soybean varieties.