Key message Citizen science, an approach that includes normal citizens in scientific research, holds great potential also for plant sciences and breeding and can be a powerful research tool to complement traditional approaches. Abstract Citizen science is an approach that includes normal citizens in scientific research, but has so far not been exploited by the various disciplines in plant sciences. Moreover, global threats challenge human well-being and science can provide solutions, but needs to leave the ivory tower in the mind of the broader public. In 2016, we performed the '1000 Gardensthe soybean experiment' citizen science project, that aimed at finding citizens in Germany who would grow soybean lines in their own gardens and evaluate them for a range of traits related to adaptation and agronomic performance. Here, we describe details of this project, i.e. the recruitment, performance, and compliance of the citizen scientists. A total of 2492 citizen scientists volunteered for the project, but through the high media coverage a much broader audience than just the participants was reached. Our 1000 Gardens project was successful in collecting a scientifically unique data set with heritabilities ranging up to 0.60 for maturity date or 0.69 for plant height. Our results suggest that the citizen science approach holds great potential also for plant sciences and can be a powerful research tool to complement traditional approaches. Our project was also successful in raising public awareness about the importance of plant breeding and in communicating key messages on the manifold benefits of legumes for a sustainable agriculture to a broader public. Thus, citizen science appears as a promising avenue to demonstrate the value of breeding and science to the general public by including normal citizens in scientific research.

European tofu manufacturers are becoming more and more interested in locally grown soybeans. A prerequisite for the development of European tofu cultivars is to improve our understanding of how the environment and genetics affect soymilk and tofu quality, as well as how quality and agronomic traits are correlated. This study was based on 215 recombinant inbred lines derived from two populations and grown at three locations that were evaluated for tofu traits in a bench-scale tofu laboratory. The heritabilities of most of the evaluated tofu traits were moderately high with h 2 > 0.6. We observed significant genotypic variance components, but an even stronger contribution of the location. The network analysis of the evaluated traits was population-dependent; however, the tofu traits were not associated with any of the agronomic traits. Collectively, our results indicate the potential to improve tofu-related traits in European soybean. The bench-scale tofu production method provides a valuable tool to test soybean lines in breeding programmes; however, the method needs to be further improved and automated to minimize errors due to the laboratory staff.

Breeding soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) cultivars that possess an improved suitability for tofu production is of crucial importance for tofu manufacturers. However, phenotyping of tofu-related traits is cumbersome, costly and time-consuming. The objective of this study was, therefore, to investigate the potential of marker-based approaches to assist selection for tofu quality. Three recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations were evaluated for several tofu-related traits. We found in each population at maximum one QTL per trait, explaining 10.9%-74.2% of the genetic variation, and no QTL at all for tofu weight and tofu yield. The QTL for soymilk weight, tofu hardness and tofu value was population-specific and may correspond to QTL controlling the proportion of water-soluble protein. The results of the QTL mapping illustrated that the tofu traits are of a highly quantitative nature. Results from the genomewide prediction were promising for seed quality traits and soaking traits, but for the tofu traits, the prediction accuracies have to be increased further based on improvements of the phenotyping procedure.