Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is one of the important crops in Canada and has the potential to expand its production further north into the Canadian Prairies. Such expansion, however, requires the search for adapted soybean germplasm useful for the development of productive cultivars with earlier maturity and increased protein concentration. We initiated several research activities to characterize 848 accessions of the soybean collection conserved at Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC) for maturity, oil and protein concentration, and genetic distinctness. The characterization revealed a wide range of variations present in each assessed trait among the PGRC soybean accessions. The trait variabilities allowed for the identification of four core subsets of 35 PGRC soybean accessions, each specifically targeted for early maturity for growing in Saskatoon and Ottawa, and for high oil and protein concentration. The two early maturity core subsets for Saskatoon and Ottawa displayed days to maturity ranging from 103 to 126 days and 94 to 102 days, respectively. The two core subsets for high oil and protein concentration showed the highest oil and protein concentration from 25.0 to 22.7% and from 52.8 to 46.7%, respectively. However, these core subsets did not differ significantly in genetic distinctness (as measured with 19,898 SNP markers across 20 soybean chromosomes) from the whole PGRC soybean collection. These findings are useful, particularly for the management and utilization of the conserved soybean germplasm.

Soil-borne oomycetes include devastating plant pathogens that cause substantial losses in the agricultural sector. To better manage this important group of pathogens, it is critical to understand how they respond to common agricultural practices, such as tillage and crop rotation. Here, a long-term field experiment was established using a split-plot design with tillage as the main plot factor (conventional tillage (CT) vs. no till (NT), two levels) and rotation as the subplot factor (monocultures of soybean, corn, or wheat, and corn–soybean–wheat rotation, four levels). Post-harvest soil oomycete communities were characterized over three consecutive years (2016–2018) by metabarcoding the Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 (ITS1) region. The community contained 292 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) and was dominated by Globisporangium spp. (85.1% in abundance, 203 ASV) and Pythium spp. (10.4%, 51 ASV). NT decreased diversity and community compositional structure heterogeneity, while crop rotation only affected the community structure under CT. The interaction effects of tillage and rotation on most oomycetes species accentuated the complexity of managing these pathogens. Soil and crop health represented by soybean seedling vitality was lowest in soils under CT cultivating soybean or corn, while the grain yield of the three crops responded differently to tillage and crop rotation regimes.

Canopy height is an essential trait in high throughput phenotyping that is often only captured as a single point, which is not always representative of canopy height. New 3D depth cameras such as the RealSense D415 (Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, USA) may provide a fast and affordable solution for measuring height from portable, ground-based phenomics systems. Our goal was to determine if the D415 was effective at measuring crop heights under field conditions in wheat (Triticum aestivum) and soybean (Glycine max) plots. The D415 camera was integrated into our Plot-Cam platform using the open software development kit from Intel. Distance arrays were captured for each plot at weekly intervals over the growing season. These were compared to canopy heights measured using a single point LiDAR (SPL) system operated by hand. Over the growing season the D415 heights were significantly correlated with the SPL heights in both wheat and soybean with coefficients of 0.77 and 0.95 and NRMSE 0.23 and 0.17 m, respectively. Early season D415 height measurements were not as similar to the SPL as the mid-and late-season measurements in wheat and soybean. The relatively low cost and open software development kit of the D415 makes it a promising tool for high throughput phenotyping applications.

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