Location: Bio-oils Research
Project Number: 5010-30100-009-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Apr 30, 2025
End Date: Apr 30, 2030
Objective:
The development of new commercial soybean varieties are necessary to continue to meet our food and energy demands domestically. The project will investigate elite breeding lines developed under the Uniform Soybean Tests (UST) program for chemical composition such as oil, protein, moisture, amino acid, sugar, fatty acid profile, and ash. These methods will aid in the development of advanced soybean germplasm with economic advantage to the U.S. farmer. The goals for the project are as follows:
Objective 1: Support the development and advancement of the Uniform Soybean Tests.
Approach:
Soybeans are composed of on average 20% oil, 40% protein, 35% carbohydrates, and 5% ash, and are in great demand not only as food and feed ingredients but as a source of industrial oil. Breeders throughout the United States (U.S.) are working together to develop new varieties or strains that are more resistant to changing climates, pests, and disease, as well as developing new traits in these materials such as improved protein and/or oil percentages. The Northern and Southern states’ Uniform Soybean Tests (UST) have been in place since the early 1940s. The UST evaluates yield, disease resistance, and quality traits of public breeding lines from the southern and northern states of the U.S. The UST program has been directed towards the testing of elite breeding lines that ultimately leads to the release of new varieties. One of the main objectives of the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) has been to provide oil, protein, and moisture percentages of bulk samples all measured on the same industrial standard instrument by methods used by commodity delivery points (grain elevators). These measurements provide breeders two pieces of valuable information: 1) have breeding efforts affected what the farmers would be paid, i.e. are protein or oil values being underrepresented and 2) are breeding year-to-year efforts affecting protein and oil values. Additional work will include reporting values for sugars, amino acids, fatty acid profiles, and ash that are correlated with wet chemistry techniques. Overall, this research will help lead to the development of new soybean varieties for the U.S. farmer and consumer.