MATURITY NEUTRAL SOYBEAN CULTIVAR SYSTEM

MATURITY NEUTRAL SOYBEAN CULTIVAR SYSTEM

UCLA Technology Available For Licensing

BACKGROUND: Soybeans are an important global crop, grown for its high protein and oil content. It is the second largest crop in the United States and our largest agricultural export, accounting for 35-40% of the global soybean trade. Soybeans are short-day plants and control the timing of their flowering and eventual maturity through specific "flowering-time" genes. These genes respond to the amount of sunlight within a 24 hour period, known as a photoperiod. Because of the spherical nature of the earth and its relationship with the sun, this photoperiod changes with respect to distance from the equator. Different photoperiods correspond to different latitudes on the earth which can be divided into maturity growth (MG) zones. Soybean cultivars are currently designated to 10 maturity groups, each optimized to grow in one of the ten MG zones within the United States. Currently, in order for a superior cultivar to be used in a different MG zone, the desired traits need to be crossed into various stocks from different maturity groups by conventional breeding processes. This can be tedious, time-consuming, and costly because those specific traits are often controlled by multiple genes and successful cross-breeding is not always possible. Current tissue culture-based or micropropagation procedures can yield transgenic plants but are limited by the number of soybean cultivars able to regenerate from the tissue culture.

INNOVATION: UCLA researches have isolated several soybean flowering-time genes and have successfully used them in a whole seedling transformation process to produce maturity neutral (MN) soybean cultivars suitable for farming in MG zones different from the original.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS

Manipulation of flowering-time genes may be used to alter the maturity characteristics of a wide range of plants besides soybeans
Can be used to ultimately increase the yield of soybeans and other crops in different MG zones

ADVANTAGES

Superior whole seedling transformation process is easier, faster and cheaper than traditional soybean transformation procedures
The MN system allows any new cultivars created to be used in different geographic locations regardless of latitude and photoperiods
The MN system drastically reduces the cost and speeds the development of new cultivars

Related Papers (Selected)

Guo H, Yang H, Mockler TC, Lin C. "Regulation of flowering time by Arabidopsis photoreceptors". Science. 279:1360-1363. [more]

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2007-354

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NCD URL: http://www.research.ucla.edu/tech/ucla07-354.htm

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