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Dear Colleagues,

Never before in human history has the subject of food security been as salient as it is today. Breeding for strategic crops such as soybean plays important roles in increasing food security and lifting the living standard in the near future. The rapid advancement in genetic breeding has brought great opportunities for soybean breeders to select superior genotypes in a cost-effective and timely manner. In combination with the rapid advancement in biotechnology and molecular techniques such as genome-wide association studies (GWASs), genomic selection (GS), quantitative trait loci (QTLs), haplotype-based selection, molecular design, and genome editing, soybean cultivar development methods have been moving from pedigree and conventional selection strategies to marker-assisted and genome-based selection methods.

This Special Issue aims to provide comprehensive insight into the recent efforts that have been made to accelerate soybean breeding, focusing on conventional and modern soybean breeding approaches, data-driven breeding, and multi-trait breeding strategies. We invite authors to submit all types of manuscripts, including original research papers, research concepts, communications, and reviews, mainly in (but not limited to) the following topics:

Advanced soybean breeding approaches;
Genome-wide association studies;
Quantitative trait loci analysis;
Genomic selection;
Haplotype-based selection;
Genome editing breeding strategy;
Predictive analytics using soybean genomic data;
Comparative studies among soybean breeding eras.

Dr. Mehrzad Eskandari
Dr. Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi
Dr. Bo Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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12 pages, 1350 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Determining Genetic Markers and Seed Compositions Related to High Test Weight in Glycine max

by Zachary Shea, William M. Singer, Luciana Rosso, Qijian Song and Bo Zhang

Plants 2023, 12(16), 2997; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12162997 - 19 Aug 2023

Viewed by 907

Abstract

Test weight, one of the primary indicators of soybean seed quality, is measured as the amount of soybean seeds in kilograms that can fit into one hectoliter. The price that growers receive for their soybean is dependent on test weight. Over the past 50 years, growers have observed a decreasing trend in test weight. Therefore, it is imperative to understand better the relationship between soybean test weight and other traits to enable breeders to select parental lines with high test weights in breeding programs to ensure the grower’s profitability. The objectives of the study were to identify genetic markers associated with high test weight in soybean and to determine the correlation between high test weight and five important seed composition traits (protein, oil, sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose content). Maturity group IV and V germplasms from the USDA soybean germplasm collection were grown in Blacksburg and Warsaw in Virginia from 2019 to 2021 and were measured for all of the above traits. Results show that test weight values ranged from 62–77 kg/hL over the three years. Multiple single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) significantly associated with high test weight were found on chromosome (Chr.) 15 along with a couple on chromosome 14, and 11 candidate genes were found near these SNPs. Test weight was found to be significantly negatively correlated with oil content, inconsistently correlated with protein content in all environments, and negatively correlated but not significantly with all three sugars except for raffinose in Blacksburg 2019. We concluded that the genes that underlie test weight might be on chromosome 15, and the validated associated SNPs might be used to assist breeding selection of test weight. Breeders should pay special attention to test weight while selecting for high oil content in soybean due to their negative correlation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Genetic Breeding for Soybean Improvement)

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13 pages, 4014 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Combination of Hairy Root and Whole-Plant Transformation Protocols to Achieve Efficient CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing in Soybean

by Qihui Kong, Jie Li, Shoudong Wang, Xianzhong Feng and Huixia Shou

Plants 2023, 12(5), 1017; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12051017 - 23 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3377

Abstract

The new gene-editing technology CRISPR/Cas system has been widely used for genome engineering in various organisms. Since the CRISPR/Cas gene-editing system has a certain possibility of low efficiency and the whole plant transformation of soybean is time-consuming and laborious, it is important to evaluate the editing efficiency of designed CRISPR constructs before the stable whole plant transformation process starts. Here, we provide a modified protocol for generating transgenic hairy soybean roots to assess the efficiency of guide RNA (gRNA) sequences of the CRISPR/Cas constructs within 14 days. The cost- and space-effective protocol was first tested in transgenic soybean harboring the GUS reporter gene for the efficiency of different gRNA sequences. Targeted DNA mutations were detected in 71.43–97.62% of the transgenic hairy roots analyzed as evident by GUS staining and DNA sequencing of the target region. Among the four designed gene-editing sites, the highest editing efficiency occurred at the 3′ terminal of the GUS gene. In addition to the reporter gene, the protocol was tested for the gene-editing of 26 soybean genes. Among the gRNAs selected for stable transformation, the editing efficiency of hairy root transformation and stable transformation ranged from 5% to 88.8% and 2.7% to 80%, respectively. The editing efficiencies of stable transformation were positively correlated with those of hairy root transformation with a Pearson correlation coefficient (r) of 0.83. Our results demonstrated that soybean hairy root transformation could rapidly assess the efficiency of designed gRNA sequences on genome editing. This method can not only be directly applied to the functional study of root-specific genes, but more importantly, it can be applied to the pre-screening of gRNA in CRISPR/Cas gene editing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Genetic Breeding for Soybean Improvement)

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