Source: CropBiotech Update

In “A Gene-Based Model to Simulate Soybean Development and Yield Responses to Environment”, C. D. Messina and colleagues of the University of Florida develop and test a procedure meant to predict how well soybean can grow in certain environments, and with specific genetic loci. Their work appears in the latest issue of Crop Science.

An existent model called CROPGRO-Soybean predicts yields for soybean based on the crop’s surrounding environment. In this research paper, scientists combined the model with genetic data. First, a field experiment was carried out to obtain phenotypic data for a set of near-isogenic lines with known genotypes at six loci; these data were then used to estimate cultivar-specific parameters for their model; and, finally, the same parameters were expressed as linear functions of the known gene loci.

Researchers combined their gene data with CROPGRO-Soybean, and were able to more accurately predict the time to maturity and yield levels of a separate field of soybeans. Their results suggest that gene-based approaches can be used to effectively assess cultivar performance, and should thus be utilized in plant breeding.