Advances in Soybean Research: From Genetics to Climate Resilience and Sustainable Production

Dear Colleagues,

Soybean is a crucial oil and protein crop, which plays a key role in global food security, but is severely influenced by climate conditions. Climate change, especially in terms of the increasingly frequent occurrence of extreme climate events, such as heat stress, drought, waterlogging and chilling damage, has caused significant soybean yield loss in recent decades. Increasing the climate resilience of soybean cultivars to climate change is highly necessary, even while the responses of different types of cultivars, such as regards their heat-sensitive, drought-sensitive, heat-tolerance and drought-tolerance traits, are still unclear. Furthermore, optimizing agricultural management is an efficient strategy for the adaption of soybean to changing climates, which has received insufficient attention. With the increasing world population and soybean consumption requirements, it is more and more important to increase soybean productivity through better combinations of genotypes, environments and management strategies.

Thus, this Special Issue mainly focuses on (1) how soybean breeding can allow for adaptation to extreme climate events with enhanced climate resilience, (2) the influences of climate change on soybean growth and development, and (3) climate-smart soybean production systems. Studies related to the above-mentioned topics are all welcome.

Dr. Xiaogang Yin
Prof. Dr. Yunlong Zhai
Dr. Renan Umburanas
Guest Editors

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