Biotech Updates

Partnership to Create Second Soybean Reference Genome

July 22, 2015

A new public-private partnership in the United States is working to sequence a large number of soybean germplasm lines. The project, titled "Large Scale Sequencing of Germplasm to Develop Genomic Resources for Soybean Improvement" is being coordinated by the University of Missouri through Henry Nguyen's Laboratory.

As part of this project, the southern U.S. soybean cultivar "Lee" (PI 548656) was selected for sequencing to create a second reference genome in soybean. This will complement the first reference genome, "Williams82", that was chosen to represent the northern U.S. germplasm. The most diverse soybean lines in the U.S. germplasm collection were selected for this project, and data will help both public and private soybean breeders and researchers to improve soybean varieties for U.S. farmers.

For more details, read the news release at the University of Missouri website.