Checkoff-funded research may help researchers breed new traits across maturity groups
Seed companies generally make soybean varieties available for five to seven years before they are replaced with more resistant, higher-yielding new varieties. Soybean breeders are being challenged to get those new, better varieties on the market more quickly to meet the growing challenges of soybean farming, but breeding traits into varieties in a different maturity group is often a hit-or-miss approach.
Molecular research, funded by the soy checkoff, may be the key to speeding up the breeding process.
“Normally when breeding for group II soybeans, which are really good for Iowa, the breeder would take a high-yielding maturity group II soybean and cross it with some other high-yielding group II soybean,” says Kristin Bilyeu, Ph.D., research molecular biologist with the U.S Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service. “Our model will allow the breeder to go outside of their normal comfort zone of just the maturity group II high-yielders and maybe cross with a high-yielding group V variety that has some particular stress resistance, knowing that the offspring will likely be group II.”
The challenge soybean breeders face is transferring traits between maturity groups while keeping the offspring in the desired maturity group. It’s possible, but it may take multiple breeding cycles to get the desired result, lengthening the process. Bilyeu’s research may help overcome that hurdle by providing breeders and researchers more insight as to what defines the plant’s maturity group in the genetic code.
“We’re looking for a set of genes that would tell us what the predicted maturity group would be for any particular soybean line,” says Bilyeu. “It would help soybean breeders develop new varieties with the most important traits more quickly.”
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