Soybean Grant Gives Researchers Tools to Unravel Better Bean

For millennia, people have grown soybeans and turned them into many useful products. But when it comes to understanding why a soybean grows, blooms or produces like it does, researchers are left with unanswered questions.

University of Georgia professor Wayne Parrott aims to find the answers with a three-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and a jumping gene in rice found by a UGA colleague.

"I'm convinced that soybeans would be so much more useful and flexible if we knew what genes we need to be working with," said Parrott, a crop and soil sciences professor in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

The soybean's genome was sequenced, or mapped, earlier this year. Now Parrott and his colleagues from the universities of Nebraska, Missouri-Columbia and Minnesota are taking soybean's genetic map and translating it so that soybean breeders can use it to produce a better bean.

Parrott is using a jumping rice gene for his part of the research. His counterparts are using radiation.

UGA plant biology professor Sue Wessler found the jumping gene in rice. Her discovery is unique. The gene is one of only a few with the ability to cut themselves out of and move to another location in the genome, altering it, Parrott said.

She shared the technology. Parrott's lab will insert the jumping rice gene into soybean plants. When something changes in a plant with the added jumping gene - such as how fast it flowers - they will then search the plant genetically. When they find the jumping gene - presumably in a new location in the genome - they can identify the modified gene there and, in this example, know what caused the plant to bloom faster.

The more genes they identify using the jumping gene technique, the more they'll know about the soybean and what they can do to improve it. The soybean has a few issues that could stand modifying, Parrott said.

On grocery store shelves, soybeans may seem like the perfect plant. It can be made into tofu and its synthetic meat products. However, the bean's protein is not balanced to the 21 amino acids humans need for a healthy diet. In addition, soybean oil contains trans fats after it's processed.

On the agricultural side, an improved soybean variety would allow farmers to plant a crop that produces more soybeans using the same amount of land. And with soybean plants that are disease and insect resistant, farmers wouldn't have to apply as much money - draining pesticides.

Farmers could also grow varieties that produce more oil or more protein.

"Genome sequencing and gene discovery is starting to open a new, exciting era for us," Parrott said.

It's a good time for soybeans. Since 1982, the U.S. has had a 15 percent increase in total soybean production.

"Acreage-wise, soybeans are among the top three crops in the United States," Parrott said. "It's the No. 1 source of vegetable oil and vegetable protein. In that regard, it's the most important of the crops."

Soybeans are used for adhesives, alternative fuels, disinfectants, plastics, salad dressings, particleboard, candy, cookies and swine feed, to name a few. "It just boggles the mind that it lends itself to so many different uses," Parrott said. "It's even in furniture care products."

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Fay Damages Crops in 31 Georgia Counties

Tropical Storm Fay brought much needed rainfall to Georgia in late August, but it caused $159 million in damage to crops in 31 south Georgia counties, according to a University of Georgia economic impact study.

Colquitt, Mitchell and Brooks counties in southwest Georgia were the hardest hit by the storm.
Conducted by the UGA Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, the study evaluated the damage five weeks after the storm and the resulting economic impact it had in the area, said Archie Flanders, an economist with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

“We released a production value loss report a few days after the storm, but it’s difficult to determine the full extent of damage for many crops immediately after a weather event,” Flanders said. “Harvesting of some crops had begun at the time of the storm, but other crops were weeks away from harvest.”

Crop conditions can improve after a storm, but the potential for disease pressure is also a lingering concern, he said.

The storm caused $54 million in damage to vegetable crops, or 70 percent of the expected value, Flanders said. Ninety-eight percent of the vegetable losses occurred in Colquitt County alone.
A quarter of the cotton crop in the affected counties was lost, totaling $62 million in damage.

Pecans had the third greatest loss from the storm with 29 percent of the expected production value lost, or $21.1 million, Flanders said.

Peanut suffered $10 million in damage, or eight percent of the expected value. The storm knocked almost $5 million off the value of tobacco in the area and $1 million off the soybeans.
“Economic changes in agriculture reach other sectors of the state economy," he said.

Though the storm cost farmers $159 million in potential income, the lack of that money has a ripple effect, costing the economy another $108 million in potential revenue. Fay’s blow cost Georgia a total of $267 million.

By Sharon Dowdy
University of Georgia

Sharon Dowdy is a news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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