RESEARCHS oybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] is a major source of world protein meal and vegetable oil (Soy Stats, 2012). Because of its nutritional and health benefits, soybean is also processed into a variety of fermented and non-fermented food products. Fermented food products include natto, soy sauce, and miso; non-fermented soyfood products include tofu, kori-tofu, yuba, nimame, soymilk, edamame, bean sprouts, and kinako.Soybean seed contains, on average, 40% protein, 20% oil, 35% carbohydrates and 5% ash (Krober and Cartter, 1962); up to 47% of the carbohydrates are soluble sugars (Hymowitz and Collins, 1974). The major soluble sugars are glucose, fructose, disaccharide sucrose, and raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) including raffinose and stachyose (Hymowitz and Collins, 1974;Liu, 1997). Among these soluble sugars, sucrose is the most abundant, which is 25 to 82 g kg -1 , followed by stachyose (14-41 g kg -1 ) and raffinose ABSTRACT Sucrose is a desirable sugar in soybean seed that affects the quality of soyfoods and feed; therefore, soybean cultivars with high sucrose would be valuable for soyfood and soybean meal markets. The objective of this study was to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with seed sucrose content using simple sequence repeat (SSr) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNp) markers that can be used for indirect selection in breeding. A low sucrose line, MFS-553, was crossed with a high sucrose plant introduction, pI 243545, to develop an F 2 -derived QTL mapping population. A total of 626 SSr primers covering 20 soybean chromosomes were used to screen the parents and 209 SSr markers were polymorphic. The polymorphic SSr markers were used to genotype 220 F 2:3 lines. Subsequently, a total of 94 F 3:4 lines derived from the initial F 2:3 population were genotyped with 5361 SNp markers spanning 20 chromosomes, of which 2016 were polymorphic. Seed from the F 2:3 , F 3:5 , and F 3:6 lines were analyzed for sucrose using high performance liquid chromatography (HpLC). Following the linkage map construction, composite interval mapping (CIM) and multiple interval mapping (MIM) were performed to locate sucrose QTL. Three novel QTLs for seed sucrose were mapped to chromosomes 5, 9, and 16, accounting for 46, 10 and 8%, respectively, of the phenotypic variation for sucrose content. SSr and SNp markers linked to these QTLs can be used for marker assisted selection (MAS) in breeding soybean lines with the desired sugar profile.