Soybean Yield Formation: What Controls It and How It Can Be Improved

By J. Board, C. S. Kahlon. 2011

95 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.; family leguminosae, sub family Papilionoideae; tribe Phaseoleae] is the most important oilseed crop grown in the world (56% of world oil seed production) (US Soybean Export Council, 2008). Major producers are the US (33% of world production), followed closely by Brazil (28%) and Argentina (21%). Remaining producers are China, India, and a few other countries. Currently, soybean is grown on about 90.5 million hectares throughout the world with total production of nearly 220 million metric tons (US Soybean Export Council, 2008). At current prices, total value of the world’s soybean crop is about $100 billion. Soybean is used as human food in East Asia, but is predominately crushed into meal and oil in the US, Argentina, and Brazil; and then used for human food (as cooking oil, margarine, etc.) or livestock feed (Wilcox, 2004). These uses are derived from the crop’s high oil (18%) and protein (38%) content. Soybean meal is a preferred livestock feed because of its high protein content (50%) and low fiber content. Soybean oil is mainly used by food processors in baked and fried food products or bottled into cooking oil. Other uses are biodiesel products and industrial uses. Global demand for soybean has been increasing over the last several years because of rapid economic growth in the developing world and depreciation of the US dollar (US Soybean Export Council, 2008). In response to this demand, world production has been increasing through a combination of increased production area and greater yield. Among major producers, most of this increase in Argentina and Brazil has come from increased production area, whereas in the US it has come from increased yield (US Soybean Export Council, 2008). However, over the last 10 years US soybean yields have been increasing by only 66 kg ha-1 yr-1 compared to 396 kg ha-1 yr-1 for corn (USDA, 2007). An even greater problem is the disparity in yield between the three main producing countries [US, Argentina, and Brazil (2,800 kg ha-1)] and that in the remainder of the world (1,510 kg ha-1) (US Soybean Export Council, 2008). Because of the limited potential for increasing production area, it is very important that yield be accelerated in order to meet increasing global demand. Our objective is to describe the basic processes affecting yield formation in soybean and to apply this information to development of management and genetic strategies for increasing soybean yield. First, we will outline potential yield gains possible with management modifications in soybean. Secondly, the main abiotic and biotic stresses will be detailed describing their modes of action on yield.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ed5cf775821277e12fd50b1211b1f8bcb8d3556

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Citations in the corpus

Physiological and management factors contributing to soybean potential yield (2015, background): “Soybean grain yield is determined by the seed per unit area and mass of individual seeds: Yield ( g m−2 ) = ( seed m−2 ) ∗ (massseed) (1) During soybean ontogeny, seed number determination occurs first, followed by seed weight determination (Board and Kahlon, 2011).”
Food crops face rising temperatures: An overview of responses, adaptive mechanisms, and approaches to improve heat tolerance (2016, unknown): “…1999; Rainey & Griffiths, 2005), peanut (Prasad et al., 1999), wheat (Guedira, McCluskey, MacRitchie, & Paulsen, 2002; Zhang et al., 2013), soybean (Board & Kahlon, 2011), lentil (Barghi, Mostafaii, Peighami, & Zakaria, 2012), and chickpea (Kumar et al., 2013) have been attributed to reductions in…”