Soybean improvement through applied genomics: from ideotype to future cultivars

Soybean improvement through applied genomics: from ideotype to future cultivars

Number

LUAUS25008

Project team

Palacký University in Olomouc – coordinator
United States Department of Agriculture, University of Missouri – foreign partner
North Dakota State University, Departmet of Plant Sciences – foreign partner
Agriculture Research, Ltd – other recipients

Local project team

Ing. Oldřich Trněný, Ph.D.

Mgr. Magdaléna Dybová

Mgr. Tomáš Vymyslický, Ph.D.

Mgr. Jana Staveníková

Jana Sojková

Supported by:

Ministry of Education Youth and Sports

Project duration: 

03/2025 – 12/2028

Summary

Due to its high protein and oil content, soy is a strategic commodity that is in steadily increasing demand around the world. With the increasing demand and insufficient production of soybeans in the EU, the amount of soybeans imported into the EU is also increasing. In order to increase soybean production in Europe, it is necessary to develop varieties suitable for the Central European climate with the desired characteristics of elite soybean varieties. Although the basic agronomic traits and nutritional characteristics have been historically characterised in soybean, far from all the genes underlying the phenotypes of these traits have been identified to date. The desired soybean ideotype is a combination of ideal stem architecture, maturation time, minimum pod bursting, ideal seed characteristics, maximum yield, etc. However, as a short-day plant, soybean is not easily adaptable to the extreme latitudes of long summer days (as in the Czech Republic). In order to prepare future varieties for Central Europe, it is necessary to identify all the genes that underlie, in particular, earliness and yield. For the preparation of new soybean varieties, it is essential to minimize the region of the genome linked to a given trait for crossing, ideally to specific causal mutations.

This project aims to increase knowledge and share experiences for the further development of soybean through applied genomics. This project will deepen the collaboration with the University of Missouri, Columbia MO, USA and develop a new collaboration with North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo, ND, USA, which is located at comparable latitudes to the Czech Republic and has a history of successful breeding programs in soybean with extreme earliness. Until now, cultivars with a predominantly Canadian pedigree have been grown in Europe and have been bred at more southerly latitudes than those from NDSU. The project has the following three main objectives: 1) identification of candidate genes for agronomically important polygenic traits such as the high yield phenotype of semi-dwarf varieties or earlier ripening time; 2) testing of NDSU varieties with these traits in the Central European environment of the Czech Republic; 3) preparation of parental lines for the development of future cultivars through molecularly assisted crosses between selected NDSU parental cultivars and Czech recipient varieties. A secondary objective will be the popularization of more efficient and thus accelerated breeding using applied genomics methods.

The outputs of the project will be mainly of a research nature with an overlap into the pre-breeding phase: extension of knowledge in basic research, creation of a background for future improvement of agronomic traits in soybean with the potential to increase the competitiveness of future US and CZ soybean varieties and adoption of new varieties at home, in Europe and worldwide.