The breeding program will continue to focus on making crosses and advancing material within the program while incorporating new objectives and taking on more projects. The current objectives will remain the same but with a more direct focus. The high oleic trait work will continue with the cooperation of Zenglu Li from UGA and Anne Gilliam from USDA-ARS Stoneville, MS. Zenglu will provide the markers so that high oleic lines can be identified, once identified crossing with Anne’s low linolenic lines will commence.

A postdoc, Dr. Hugh Moye, was hired at the start of the year and will play a pivotal role in providing collaborations across disciplines. This opportunity will benefit not only him but also several members of the AU team and colleagues in other states which will be associated with the projects. Hugh will provide support to investigating the agronomic traits such as water use efficiency and how that relates to irrigation as laid out in Alvaro Sans and Sevgi Gurbuz projects.

This year, large 25 gallon pots, will be filled with alkaline soils from the Blackbelt and transported to Auburn, AL. This will allow iron chlorosis tolerant breeding lines to be evaluated in close proximity and would allow constant monitoring. A recent publication mentioned that iron chlorosis tolerance is closely linked with phenylpropronoid production. A separate publication found that phenylpropronoids are linked to target spot resistant cultivars. This year we will infect iron chlorosis lines to determine if they are resistant to target spot and attempt to bridge that information.

The program will continue to cooperate in the USDA Uniform soybean trial. We will also conduct a large GWAS trial in order to collect molecular data surrounding target spot resistance.

The intent with the soybean funding is to fund a program that will continually increase in size, focus on the needs of the Alabama soybean grower and train graduates and young professionals. The vision is that this funding will help us to build collaborations and establish preliminary data so that we can pursue larger federal grants.