Updated November 21, 2019:
Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) present in soybean meal reduce metabolizable energy for monogastric animals; therefore, development of low RFO soybean meal is of great interest to the swine and poultry industries. Modified carbohydrate composition is considered the most promising meal trait due to the potential value to the animal industry and the lack of negative agronomic impacts. Previous results from poultry feeding studies conducted by this team indicate that a statistically significant improvement in feed conversion ratio in chickens can be obtained from reducing RFOs and increasing sucrose in soybean seeds.

With a multi-institutional team with broad expertise, we have our efforts on developing and commercializing new soybean varieties with improved soluble carbohydrate composition and an improved nutritional bundle in a range of maturity groups (MG I-V).

Our Objectives are: 1) Develop of soybean varieties with >7% sucrose and lower RFO’s (1-2%) that results in an increase of ME up to of 100 kcal per pound of meal; 2) Support value-enhanced meal, value-capture, and market development using data science methods.

There are different genes and alleles involved on these traits, therefore different combinations are always valuable. In addition to the previously known alleles, our team discovered new alleles that makes it possible to have soybean with ultra-low RFOs and at least 7% seed sucrose. All the breeders working on this project are working on incorporate those valuable alleles into elite high yielding lines, so that farmers will have soybean varieties that combine high yielding and the desirable levels of sucrose and RFOs. With such soybeans in hand, we expect to increase the value of soybean meal $0.50 per bushel.

Each team focus on its environment’s factors, such as temperature, light, soil and rain conditions, but we are also focused on developing varieties that can be adopted in a range of environments, focusing on maturity groups MG0-V. For that purpose, we are working on stability and adaptability experiments, so that we can 1) understand how the sucrose and RFO’s content respond to different environments; 2) Identify germplasms that are better for these traits for a wider range of experiments.

We are also working on combining HOLL oil trait plus the ultra-low RFO trait or normal RFO and having these different sets of seeds for poultry studies. For that propose we are growing tons of each NIL set that will be used on animal feeding studies conducted by our animal nutrition partner. That will enable soybean meal performance comparisons of the normal RFO or Low RFO high oleic/low linoleic acid (HOLL) oil trait.

It’s valuable to highlight that 23 modified carbohydrate lines were selected for the USDA Uniform Trials and are being evaluated at the Uniform Test Traited Material (16 lines to Uniform Test Traited Material MG 4 and 7 Lines to Uniform Test Traited Material MG 3 ) , summer 2019. These lines were phenotyped for sucrose, raffinose and stachyose content via HPLC. The best ones might be available to farmers soon.