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Soybean rust incited by Phakopsora pachyrhizi Syd. is one of the major diseases of soybean and is reported to cause an yield loss from 20 to 80 percent (Bromfield 1976). During kharif 1994, the rust appeared in epiphytotic form in different soybean growing areas and caused substantial losses. Then onwards it is appearing every year in epiphytotic form in northern parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh (Patil et al. 1997). Though the effective fungicides have been identified for its control, their continuous use may pose the problem of development of resistance in the rust pathogen to these fungicides (Patil and Anahosur 1988). Development of resistant genotypes is of prime importance in the management of soybean rust disease. Most of the soybean genotypes identified or developed by the earlier workers found moderately resistant to rust (Singh and Thapliyal 1977, Yang, 1978, Bromfield et al., 1980 and Bharati, 1989). Chan (1976) opined that solely breeding cannot solve soybean rust problem until a highly resistant or immune cultivar is available. The attempt made since kharif 1995 to 2001 to screen the soybean varieties/germplasm lines has yielded only few genotypes with moderate amount of resistance (Patil and Basavaraja, 1997). Hence, an attempt was made to screen 982 soybean genotypes supplied by the National Research Centre for Soybean, Indore during kharif 2002 and 2003 at Research and Development Unit, Ugar Khurd, Belgaum district, Karnataka, a hot spot for soybean rust disease. The genotypes were sown in single rows of five-metre length and scoring was done at 75, 85 and 95 days after sowing …