Urbana, Illinois
December 20, 2007
University of Illinois scientists are overcoming biological
barriers to cross soybeans and Glycine tomentella, a distant
cousin of soybeans, to produce fertile seeds that hold
significant promise for increasing genetic diversity.
"Tomentella is a small, viney, perennial that originated from
the Brampton Island off Queensland, Australia. It is a distant
cousin to the soybean and has useful traits such as resistant to
soybean rust, soybean cyst nematodes, soybean aphids, and even
viruses like bean pod mottle," said Ram Singh, University of
Illinois plant cytogeneticist.
Singh's research involves taking pollen from G. tomentella and
moving it to the flower of soybean. Creating a fertile plant is
a long process. When pollination was successful, pod abortion
ensued. To overcome pod abortion, the immature seeds were
rescued from aborting pods and cultured in artificial media to
nurture the developing embryos and keep them alive.
"It has taken anywhere from six months to a year for one seed to
germinate. Healthy, fertile, hybridized germplasm could be
available to the soybean industry by 2010," said Singh.
According to Randall Nelson, USDA soybean geneticist and manger
of the National Soybean Germplasm Collection, this hybridization
could generate important traits including drought tolerance,
yield genes, seed composition genes, and other disease and pest
resistance traits.
"No doubt, the exotic soybean germplasm coming from successful
hybridization will enhance the genetic diversity of commercial
soybean cultivars," he said.
This research and continued research efforts are supported by
the USDA and the Illinois Soybean Association. |
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