Soybeans
and you
by
Jessica Petzel, posted Nov. 2, 2007
MU
houses the National Center for Soybean Biotechnology, which
is located in the Life Sciences Center. The center is the
hub of several research projects dealing with the deceiving
simple soybean plant. It brings 40 scientists from 11 disciplines
and three institutions together to apply cutting-edge tools
and improve soybean quality, production and use, according
to a brochure put out by the center.
Most people
may not care, yet soybeans are a daily part of life. Perhaps
you have never knowingly eaten soybeans at the dinner table,
but you certainly consume them. Nearly everything fried before
in the U.S. uses soybean oil.
“People
don’t realize how much they come into contact with soybean
oil,” said Gary Stacy, associate director at the center.
Before
food containing significant levels of soybeans hits the table,
a considerable amount of time and energy is expended by researchers
in order for you to get your dinner.
“The
No. 1 biotic stress is resistance to the soybean cyst nematode,”
said David Sleper, associate director at the center and professor
of agronomy. “It is the most troublesome soybean disease.
We have made lots of good progress looking for new genes resistant
to them and we found them.”
The SCN
are detrimental because they wipe out the whole plant. Sleper
and his researchers found two genes that are resistant to
the deadly attacker. However, that success is not yet a victory.
“If
farmers grow a plant resistant to SCN, the resistance goes
back to the two sources,” Stacy said. “That is
very fragile. Ninety-five percent of acreage is planted to
those two sources. That’s not good.”
That is
not good because if through natural biological processes SCN
was able to get past these two genes, 95 percent of the fields
would die. Therefore, researchers are currently broadening
the sources of genetic resistance. They are creating more
genes that are resistant to SCN by using 120 plant introductions
from a partnership out of China, and they are trying to find
the genes in those plants that make the Chinese plants resistant
to SCN. If the research is not successful, you could be asked
if you want carrots with that rather than fries, chips, onion
rings or any other number of fried sides.
There
are several projects working to ensure the survival of soybeans
so you can continue to enjoy dinner. Sarah Sexton, a master’s
degree student studying plant and insect microbiology, is
working on one of those projects.
Sexton
works with Sleper on a project that specifically looks at
the roots of a soybean plant. Essentially, she grows a plant
for 30 days, harvests it, inoculates or introduces the cyst,
freezes the root in liquid nitrogen and sends the samples
to a lab in St. Louis, where a chemical process reveals how
resistant each plant is to the cyst.
Stacy
is working on the “Soybean Genome Project,” which
would greatly help Sleper and his group.
“This
allows us to do a lot of basic research so we know what it
means to be a soybean and what it takes to create a soybean,”
Stacy said.
Essentially,
the plan is for a Web site to have the entire soybean genome
available to anyone. The Web site would include links of the
genome showing what each element does.
This information
affects Sleper, who uses the information with some of his
own applied research to make farming better, easier and more
profitable for professionals in Missouri. Mapping the genome
could reveal what genes are resistant to SCN.
“What
makes the soybean tick?” Sleper said. “Once we
find out the sequence, we find out a lot of things: location
of genes, functions of various genes.”
In other
words, mapping out the genome would help Sleper and his team
make soybeans more resistant to the number one danger, SCN.
That way, you can still have your super-sized meal complete
with fries.
