Developing Chemically Mutagenized Soybean Populations to Improve Soybean Seed Oil Content for Biodiesel Production and Nutrition Facts

The alteration of fatty acid profiles to improve soybean oil quality has been a long time goal of many researches through the world. Biodiesel is an up and coming trend in energy production. Breeding effort can be undertaken in order to produce higher energy profile soybean oil. Using the ethyl-methanesulfonate (EMS) mutagenesis effects on DNA, significant changes to the genes and gene network underlying oil profile can be achieved, these changes are hard to accomplish under standard breeding techniques. High content Linolenic and Stearic acid is very important for fuel and Biodiesel production but disadvantageous for food production due to the fact that the oil is oxidized easily and the foods go rancid quickly. However, Soybean oil with elevated Oleic acid is desirable for food, because this monounsaturated fatty acid improves the nutrition and oxidative stability of soybean oil compared to other oils. In order to improve the quality of soybean oil and processed foods, chemically mutagenized soybean has been developed in this work. This project allow us to,  develop lines presenting different oil and protein traits from the current wild type, produce lines with high energy potential and high nutrition effects. Seeds harvested from individual M3 and M4 plants (from 2 successive years 2012 and 2013) were analyzed for Protein content, oil composition and content. Moreover, more than 10 phenotypic traits including Oil Analysis (Stearic, Palmitic, Oleic, Linolenic and Linoleic), Seed Protein Content, Seed Nitrogen Content, Size of the Plant, High Yield (Weight of the seeds), High Germination, Insect Resistance, Chlorophyll Deficiency, Leaf Shape, Branch Architecture were collected and analyzed in this study of the Forrest mutagenized population.