Funded by North Dakota Soybean Council
Breeding, Evaluation, and Maintenance of NDSU Core Germplasm
This project supports the NDSU soybean breeding program core germplasm program. The core germplasm program comprises nearly all of the NDSU soybean germplasm collection including conventional, tofu and natto soybean. The goal is to focus on creating high yielding soybean lines that are stacked with necessary resistances for North Dakota including: soybean cyst nematode, iron deficiency chlorosis, soybean sudden death syndrome, white mold, and brown stem rot. Many of these traits are multigenic and require intense breeding efforts to achieve improvement. Once the superior germplasm is created, it can enter the trait introgression pipeline where acquired herbicide resistances can be added. This proposed project includes every step of creating superior core germplasm from hybridization, early generation advancement, yield testing, pure seed creation, and finally breeder seed increases. My role as the breeder is to oversee and manage the breeding team to assure they are carrying out the breeding pipeline as efficiently, purely, and safely as possible. This includes decision making and hands on field/ seed lab work. This project also allows for hands-on training for interns, undergraduate, graduate students to give them the experience they need to be successful breeders following graduation.
Modern Breeding Methodologies to Expediate Elite Variety Release
This project allows the expedition of elite variety release by utilizing speed breeding techniques to introgress economically important traits and implement genomic prediction. 1) Trait Integration: Using elite, high yielding materials created in the Core germplasm project, newly acquired high value, single gene traits can be introgressed into the elite germplasm quickly utilizing a backcrossing protocol that expedites generation turnaround time. It is much faster to add a single gene to elite background through backcrossing than to try to improve yield and add the trait simultaneously. This is a methodology similar to what is used in private companies. 2) Genomic Prediction: Genomic prediction is a technique to assist breeders to select high yielding lines before they have yield data. This methodology is used in private company breeding practices for several years and has led to significant yield gains. The goal is to add this methodology to the NDSU soybean breeding pipeline over time. This entails genotyping a subset of the F5 populations of experimental lines which have not entered yield testing and developing statistical models for yield and maturity to predict successful performance.
Funded by United Soybean Board
Developing and releasing high-yielding soybean varieties/germplasm with climate-resilience and genetic diversity across maturity group 00 to VIII.
The long-term goal of the proposed project is to support sustainability of soybean production with climate resiliency for the North Dakota soybean growing region. The proposed project aims to create genetic resources for climate change stresses and to develop high yielding germplasm for early maturity groups. North Dakota State University has the responsibility to incorporate known drought tolerance traits into North Dakota germplasm. This includes the sustained nitrogen fixation and slow wilt traits which were acquired from the University of Arkansas.
Funded by North Central Soybean Research Program
SoyRenSeq II: Validating and Deploying New Sources of Disease Resistances into Elite Soybean Lines across the North Central Region
Understanding the genetic mechanisms behind disease resistance is extremely important and economically valuable for breeders, farmers/producers, and the seed market. It allows breeders to introgress necessary resistance traits into their advanced germplasm quickly through the use of molecular markers. Development of molecular markers can be a time-consuming process, however this can be speed up by collaboration with experts in molecular genetics. The collaboration between breeders and molecular geneticists will allow for faster output of high yielding cultivars stacked with economically valuable disease resistance traits.
The SOYGEN Collaborative: Genomics-assisted breeding for environmentally resilient soybeans
Genomic prediction utilization is attributed to a faster gain in yields than conventional breeding alone. By participating in the North Central Soybean Research Program SOYGEN project the NDSU soybean breeding program will benefit immensely. This project will study and measure genetic by environment interactions, with the goal of improving selection for varietal stability. Additionally, this project provides funding for genotyping untested early generation lines to create predictive models for yield and other economically important agronomic traits.
