St. Louis, Missouri
February 27, 2009
Finding your way is much easier
with a road map, and soybean researchers now have a map to find
their way around the soybean genome. With the help of the
United Soybean Board
(USB) and soybean checkoff-funded genomics tools, the U.S.
Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has mapped
and released a draft of the soybean’s genetic code.
“The initial funding from the United Soybean Board enabled the
initial sequencing of what we call EST, express sequence tags.
In my opinion this was the beginning,” says Gary Stacey,
Associate Director of the National Center for Soybean
Biotechnology at the University of Missouri. “USB was also very
much involved all the way along, for instance, in sponsoring
community workshops and community meetings. That was very
critical for getting the soybean research community together.”
Researchers will not be the only ones benefiting from this
achievement. Soybean farmers can look forward to better
varieties becoming available faster than before. Breakthroughs
are already happening on the development of a drought-resistant
soybean variety. Along with improving defensive traits,
researchers are also looking for genetic markers that may be
able to help increase soybean yields.
“Having the genome expedites the process of soybean
improvement,” says Perry Cregan a United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) researcher.
Stacey adds that this tool will allow researchers to do soybean
breeding and mapping more precisely, meaning better ways to
attack agronomic problems and better improvements to soybeans.
“Soybean farmers will be able to get new varieties faster and
with better traits,” says Rick Stern, a soybean farmer from
Cream Ridge, N.J., and USB director. “Eventually I hope to see
substantially increased yields from new varieties that are
resistant to diseases and can withstand drought better than the
varieties we have today.”
USDA researcher David Hyten is already putting the genome to use
by identifying new molecular markers that can be used to
discover new traits in other lines of soybeans and closely
related wild species. By comparing additional sequencing from
other soybean lines to the genome sequence researchers are able
to find hundreds of thousands of markers of which 50,000 will be
selected to characterize the 19,000 soybean varieties housed in
the USDA’s germplasm collection, which can be used to find new
traits that could be useful to soybean farmers. Hyten’s project
will create a database unlike anything available for any other
species.
“The leadership of the soybean checkoff years ago allows us to
be in the position we are today,” adds Stern. “I hope that in 10
years, soybean farmers will be able to look back and say the
same thing about our decisions now.”
USB is made up of 68 farmer-directors who oversee the
investments of the soybean checkoff on behalf of all U.S.
soybean farmers. Checkoff funds are invested in the areas of
animal utilization, human utilization, industrial utilization,
industry relations, market access and supply. As stipulated in
the Soybean Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act,
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has oversight
responsibilities for USB and the soybean checkoff. |
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