By Boerma, H. Roger
Summary
There is a renewed interest in soybean production in the Southeast. This is due to the increase in value of a bushel of soybean. This increase in value is primarily driven by the demand for soybean as a feedstock for the production of biodiesel. New highly productive UGA soybean varieties are available to meet this growing demand.
Situation
In the southeastern United States weed control in soybean fields requires significant managerial and monetary input by the grower. Glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup® herbicide) is a broad-spectrum herbicide. The development of a glyphosate-tolerant soybean (Roundup Ready®) by the Monsanto Company provided the opportunity to breed elite varieties that were insensitive to the application of herbicidal rates of glyphosate. There is renewed interest in soybean production in the Southeast due to the increase in soybean price and the opportunities to utilize soybean oil in the manufacture of biodiesel.
Response
Since cost-effective weed control is an important consideration for southeastern soybean growers, a backcross breeding program was initiated to introduce glyphosate tolerance into the previously developed University of Georgia soybean varieties, Benning, Haskell, Boggs, and Prichard. The application of DNA marker selection hastened the recovery of the yield and pest resistances of these adapted soybean varieties. Two additional years of field testing identified Roundup Ready® versions of Benning, Haskell, Boggs, and Prichard. These four newly developed Roundup Ready® varieties were equal to their non-Roundup Ready® parent in seed yield, seed composition, and disease resistance. Two additional varieties have been created by forward crossing a high yield soybean to these backcross-derived Roundup Ready® varieties. In 2008 we released a new highly productive conventional (non-transgenic) soybean variety.
Impact
The University of Georgia Research Foundation in collaboration with the Georgia Seed Development Commission licensed the marketing rights of these Roundup Ready® varieties to AgSouth Genetics (AGS 758RR, AGS Prichard RR, and AGS Boggs RR), UniSouth Genetics (USG 7732nRR), the Monsanto Company (Dekalb H7242RR), and Pioneer (97M50). In the past year these varieties were grown on over 400,000 acres and were planted in over 80% of Georgia's soybean fields. There is a high level of interest in the new Roundup Ready® AGS 758RR and 97M50 varieties along with the conventional variety, G00-3209.
State Issue
Agricultural Profitability and Sustainability
Source : uga.edu