Climate change has threatened soybean production and affected soybean growers’ profitability in the U.S. Increasing genetic yield potential and improving climate resilience using diverse soybean germplasm are important goals in soybean breeding and critical for sustainable soybean production in the U.S. With funding support from the United Soybean Board over the past several years, the team has successfully developed a strong pipeline of elite soybean materials with high-yield, climateresilience and diverse pedigrees and novel breeding technologies and tools to support breeding efforts. Based on previous discoveries and research foundation, seven scientists from six soybean-growing states covering MG 00 to VIII will work as a team in this proposal to achieve the following objectives: 1) evaluate and release high yielding soybean varieties with regional adaptation and climate resilience across MG 00 to VIII; 2) develop soybean germplasm with diverse genetic backgrounds for climate resilience; and 3) discover novel genes associated with climate resilience using emerging technologies and methodologies to support the breeding efforts. The outcomes generated from this proposal will include released varieties/germplasm and next-gen breeding materials with wide regional adaptation for commercial production, and novel genes associated with climate resilience. This work will benefit soybean growers in the U.S. by providing new soybean varieties adapted to regional growing conditions with resilience to climate changes. The project will also provide new and improved germplasm to the commercial and public breeders for use as parental stocks. Novel genes associated with climate resilience will benefit soybean researchers, enabling accelerated genetic gains.
Climate change is the leading factor that threatens agricultural production and food nutritive quality in the world by elevating the global temperature, disrupting regional rainfall patterns, accelerating biotic and abiotic stresses, increasing CO2 level, etc. (Raza et al., 2019; Saleem et al., 2001). Agricultural crop production is declining due to adverse and unstable environmental conditions (Rosenzerig et al., 2014). For example, a reduction of 86-92% of soybean yield by 2050 relative to 2013-2017 was projected using the data of yield, temperature and precipitation in the U.S. over 1951-2017 (Khanna, et al., 2021). In order to advance resilience agriculture, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society and Soil Science Society of America have recommended irrigation management, water conservation, crop diversification, waste reduction, cover crop, and no-till farming to farmers. However, the simplest and most effective way to reduce the impact of climate changes on farms is to plant climate-resilient varieties. Increased genetic diversity and sustainable regional adaptability are essential for such varieties to perform well year after year. Current U.S. soybean cultivars have a very narrow genetic base to adapt to the stressful environments due to the changes in regional climatic conditions. However, worldwide soybean is a very diverse crop with adaptability to a wide range of climatic conditions that allow its cultivation in almost any country in the world. Nearly 22,000 soybean accessions in the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Soybean Collection, Urbana, Illinois have captured most of the worldwide diversity of soybean in its exotic collections. The public soybean breeding programs represented in this team have worked for more than 15 years with partial funding from USB to develop genetically diverse breeding lines by crossing with some exotic lines from the USDA-ARS collection. As a result, our team will be able to release varieties with improved genetic diversity and resilience to the changing climatic conditions with just 1-3 years of research.