Soybean Molecular Design Breeding

Abstract

Soybean is a globally important crop being rich source of edible oil and protein. Traditional phenotypic-based breeding procedures have contributed significantly to the development of several improved soybean varieties. In this context, molecular breeding technology, is seen as a viable way to address the issues and providing great opportunities to accelerate the process of soybean breeding. Hence, marker-assisted breeding (MAB) has been greatly applied in the soybean breeding to accelerate the improved soybean cultivars, transgenic breeding technology achieves great success in the soybean production. New genomics approaches and the development of genome editing technologies have increased soybean genetic diversity in its germplasm and have created new possibility to make precise genes modifications to controlling essential agronomic traits in an elite background Besides, the establishment of genotype driven phenotypic design breeding model has become a great challenge for soybean molecular breeding in the future. These approaches have the potential to expand the practical utility of molecular design breeding and speed up the germplasm and breeding materials in soybeans. This chapter goes into great detail about how current advances in genomics and phenomics can increase the efficiency and potential of MAB, transgenic technology, molecular design breeding and gene editing technology in soybean improvement.