ABSTRACT
Soybeans, Glycine max Merrill was first introduced in Nigeria in 1910. Production is limited to about 170,000 ha of land mostly in the Savannah zone with an annual output of 70,000 metric tons. Cultivation is usually in mixtures with sorghum, millet and citrus orchards. Intercropping sometimes referred to as mixed cropping is the cropping system that involves the growing of two or more crops in the presence of one another on the same piece of land. It is dominant in peasant farming in the tropics and also in East Africa it is a traditional cropping practice. However, a legume is normally included in the intercrop with cereals. Marked progress was achieved in mutation breeding of soybeans, and several valuable mutants as well as even varieties were obtained, for example as in Japan, USSR, Thailand or Democratic Germany. In most cases gamma rays were applied to induce mutations in soybeans.
