Soybean Genome Diversity and Trait Discovery

Soybean is the major source of vegetable oil, proteins and animal feed in the world. Narrow genetic basis of soybean is the major challenge for continuous improvement of soybean yield and quality. Re-sequencing a large number of soybean germplasm is providing opportunities for improving our understanding of the history of soybean domestication and to accelerate crop improvement. A comprehensive catalog of genome variations in soybean germplasm will greatly facilitate the identification of rare alleles associated with valuable variants. At the same time, development of several reference genomes representing spectrum of soybean evolution and domestication makes these studies more significant. Core sets of soybean germplasm including both cultivated and wild types were selected based on an initial diversity analysis of the entire USDA germplasm collection for re-sequencing. Sequencing analysis has revealed significant variation among the germplasm genomes including putative domestication sweeps. Intensive analysis of these variants and associating these variations with the phenotype provided keys to dissect major domestication and agronomic traits for crop improvement. Also, new genetic mapping strategies were developed to optimize genetic variations and discovery of genes and molecular markers for breeding programs.