Updated July 2, 2018:

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July 1, 2017 – June 30, 2018
Annual Report: Breeding of Glyphosate-Resistant Soybean Cultivars
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ted Helms, Department of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University
Cooperating Scientists: Dr. Berlin Nelson, Department of Plant Pathology, North Dakota State University

Growers would like to purchase glyphosate-resistant soybean varieties and be able to save their own seed for planting the next year. These varieties need to high-yielding, lodging-resistant, tolerant to iron-deficiency chlorosis (IDC), and have good disease and pest resistance. Soybean varieties are protected by a patent on the glyphosate-resistant gene (construct) and often protected by a second patent on the variety. Monsanto has provided a website to explain these issues (http://www.soybeans.com/patent.aspx). The purpose of this research is to provide superior glyphosate-resistant varieties that have been developed by North Dakota State University (NDSU). At this time, one glyphosate-resistant soybean variety that was developed by NDSU is available to growers, which is named ND17009GT. ND17009GT is a 00.9 maturity cultivar.

Glyphosate-resistant experimental lines have been developed by the NDSU Soybean Breeding Project. Crosses were initiated in the summer of 2010 and new crosses have been initiated in every subsequent year. As part of the continuing process of developing new lines, 9,150 plant-rows were planted in the spring of 2017. In the 2017 growing season, the first year of replicated yield testing was conducted for 1,152 new glyphosate-resistant experimental lines. In the 2017 growing season, 174 experimental lines were tested for the second year of yield evaluation. Thirty of those 174 experimental lines were advanced to the third year of yield testing in the 2018 growing season. A total of 5,440 plots were devoted to this project in 2017. These advanced experimental lines vary in maturity from a 00.7 to a 0.9 maturity.

Seed of four advanced lines that were very competitive with private company RR2 varieties for yield and agronomic traits were increased in Chile during the 2017-2018 winter season. In the spring of 2018, we have planted about two acres of seed increase for each of these four experimental lines.

The benefit to the North Dakota soybean industry would be to reduce the cost of soybean seed for varieties that are glyphosate-resistant. This would reduce input costs because growers could save their own seed of glyphosate-resistant soybean varieties that were developed at NDSU. They could then plant this seed without paying a technology fee. At present, farmers must purchase expensive new seed each year.