Proposal Synopsis (250 words or less):
This proposal seeks to use modern biotechnology tools and advances in plant transformation to develop a deeper understanding of the genes that control critical traits in soybean, and identify modifications of these genes for trait improvement. There are two major types of modern crop biotechnology: (a) genetic transformation, which adds a gene from another species into the crop (e.g., the glyphosate resistance transgene) and (b) genome engineering, which can modify specific genes in soybean without the permanent introduction of DNA from other species (i.e., the resulting plants are non-transgenic). With support from MSR&PC, our group has been at the...