Updated February 14, 2022:
Flood stress is becoming severe as a result of increased heavy precipitations in soybean growing areas. To support sustainable soybean production and stabilize farm income, this project aims to develop high-yielding/flood-tolerant varieties and fit these varieties into best management systems to mitigate yield loss due to flooding.
Our progress up to date is exciting, as soybean yield was increased by ~15 bushels/acre over currently available varieties when flooded. New flood-tolerant varieties were developed and are being improved by subjecting an array of wild and domesticated Asian soybean types to flooding at early- and mid- season, identifying the most tolerant types, and then using them as parental stocks in applied U.S. breeding. Those high-yielding and flooding-tolerant lines were released or being released for germplasm and varieties. Three best lines from the University of Missouri (Chen group) were transferred to a seed company (GDM Seeds) via a standard MTA and another MTA is currently being drafted with AgSouth Genetics to evaluate two flood tolerate lines from USDA-ARS, NC (Fallen group) for commercial production.
Our key to breeding success in this multi-state project is a large network of field sites for flood-tolerance screening and variety development. In addition, we are integrating our advances in flood tolerance with ongoing USB projects to transfer flood-tolerance to high-protein and high-oleic materials so that they are more stable and profitable in the farmer’s field. Breeding advances are being achieved by blending classical/genomic breeding approaches.