Climate change effects:

• More intense storms
• More rainfall
• More ponded water in soybean fields even with good drainage systems
• Yield reductions due to ponded water can be as much as 25%. Flooded soybean plants are less resistant to drought stress later in the season

What are we doing?

• Developing flood tolerant soybean cultivars by molecular plant breeding and genetic transformation

Progress to date:

• Identified flood tolerant soybean germplasm from Asia (Figure 2A and 2B) with profuse and deep root growth in flooded soil
• Made crosses with flood sensitive US varieties and developed a population of 200 individual lines with varying degrees of flood tolerance.

• Field tested the population at two locations in 2007 and 2008 and in the greenhouse

• Fingerprint the population with 600 DNA markers.
• Five transgenic lines containing a gene to to alleviate premature senescence  due  to (or allow the plants to grow under) flooding stress

Expected deliverables:

• 2009, gene locations mapped and DNA markers identified for use by plant breeders
• 2009, genes associated with flooding tolerance in roots identified
• 2010, field testing of transgenic soybean for flooding tolerance
• 2010, near isogenic lines available for testing