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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Raleigh, North Carolina » Soybean and Nitrogen Fixation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #426239
Research Project: Exploiting Genetic Diversity to Improve Environmental Resilience, Seed Composition, Yield, and Profitability of U.S. Soybean

Location: Soybean and Nitrogen Fixation Research

Title: Drought tolerance in soybean: genetics, metabolomics, remote sensing, and breeding for enhanced drought tolerance

Author
item BURNER, NATHANIEL - University Of Georgia
item HARRIS, DONNA - University Of Georgia
item NYAM, CLEMENT - University Of Georgia
item LEE, NAMHEE - University Of Georgia
item HYUK SUH, JOON - University Of Georgia
item Fallen, Benjamin
item LI, ZENGLU - University Of Georgia
item AHMAD, ILYAS - University Of Georgia

Submitted to: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/23/2026
Publication Date: 3/13/2026
Citation: Burner, N., Harris, D., Nyam, C., Lee, N., Hyuk Suh, J., Fallen, B.D., Li, Z., Ahmad, I. 2026. Drought tolerance in soybean: genetics, metabolomics, remote sensing, and breeding for enhanced drought tolerance. Frontiers in Plant Science. 17, 1733525. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2026.1733525.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2026.1733525

Interpretive Summary: Drought is one of the main challenges to successful soybean production, often leading to significant reductions in yield. Breeding programs aim to develop soybean varieties that can maintain strong and consistent yields even when water is limited. However, improving drought tolerance is complex, as it involves many factors related to plant growth, structure, and genetics. Identifying which varieties handle drought better is difficult because traditional methods for testing drought tolerance are slow, subjective, and not always reliable. Also, the genetic traits linked to drought tolerance often have small effects and behave differently depending on where and how soybeans are grown. Because of these challenges, researchers are exploring new tools to evaluate and identify drought-tolerant soybeans. This review highlights progress in breeding for drought tolerance, the application of advanced technologies, and how these developments are contributing to the future of soybean improvement.

Technical Abstract: Drought stress is the most damaging abiotic stress to soybean, with variable rainfall accounting for much of the year-to-year variation in yield. Drought tolerance breeding efforts in soybean aim to develop soybean cultivars that exhibit stable and competitive yields in years with and without drought stress. Soybean drought tolerance is a highly complex trait that is influenced by many physiological, morphological, and genetic factors. Identification of genotypes with improved drought tolerance is challenging because traditional phenotyping methods for drought tolerance are subjective, time-consuming, and sensitive. Additionally, QTL associated with drought tolerance tend have small estimated effects and are inconsistently identified across environments and populations. For these reasons, there is a need to explore improved methodologies for identifying and evaluating promising sources of genetic variation for improved drought tolerance. This review outlines the current state of drought tolerance breeding efforts in soybean and discusses efforts to use remote sensing, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to advance drought tolerance in soybean.