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Soybean discovery

The discovery of a gene that controls the soybean plant’s main stem growth has been discovered by a Purdue University scientist. Jianxin Ma, an assistant professor of agronomy says the discovery could lead to new types of soybean plants that will allow producers to incorporate desired characteristics into their local varieties.

“The approach that we used in this study proves to be promising for rapid gene discovery and characterization in soybean,” said Ma. “With the genomic resources and information available, we spent only six months pinpointing and confirming the candidate gene – the time it takes to grow one generation of soybean.”

Ma’s findings were published in the April 26th Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The National Science Foundation, Indiana Soybean Alliance and Purdue University funded his work.