Genetic diversity is essential for crop breeding and one way to estimate it is through the concept of genetic base, which can be defined as the number of ancestors and their relative genetic contributions (RGC) to each cultivar. The RGC can be estimated through the coefficient of parentage between the ancestors and cultivars. Previous studies determined that the genetic base of Brazilian soybean was very narrow. The objective of this work was to evaluate the pedigree of 444 Brazilian soybean cultivars to estimate their genetic base. The cultivars were divided according to their release dates and according to their origin (public or private), and the genetic base for each group was also estimated. We found 60 ancestors, of which the top four (CNS, S-100,... |