Agronomically elite soybeans with high beta-conglycinin content

Abstract

The invention overcomes the deficiencies of the art by providing an agronomically elite soybean plant with non-transgenic mutations of at least two of the glycinin subunits selected from the group consisting of Gy1, Gy2, Gy3, Gy4, and Gy5, such as conferring a Gy3 and Gy4 null phenotype and increased β-conglycinin content in seed. The invention also provides derivatives, and plant parts of these plants and uses thereof. Methods for marker assisted selection of soybean varieties comprising non-transgenic mutations conferring a reduced Gy1, Gy2, Gy3, Gy4, and Gy5 phenotype are also provided as part of the current invention. Methods for producing such plants that are further lipoxygenase and / or Kunitz Trypsin Inhibitor null and the plants produced thereby are also provided. The invention is significant in that soybeans from such plants are preferred dietary additives and provide important health benefits.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] This application claims the priority of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 714,779, filed Sep. 7, 2005; and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 722,493, filed Sep. 30, 2005; each of the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE OF SEQUENCE LISTING SUBMITTED ON A COMPACT DISC [0002] The Sequence Listing is submitted on one compact disc (Copy 1), together with a duplicate thereof (Copy 2), each created on Sep. 7, 2006, and each containing one—79 kb file entitled “MSUT015U.S.APP.TXT.” The material contained on the compact disc is specifically incorporated herein by reference. [0003] 1. Field of the Invention [0004] The present invention relates generally to the field of plant breeding and molecular biology. In particular, the invention relates to agronomically elite soybean varieties with increased beta-conglycinin content and materials for making such plants. [0005] 2. Description of Related Art [...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019] Still yet another aspect of the invention is a method of producing a food product for human or animal consumption comprising: (a) obtaining a plant of the invention; (b) cultivating the plant to maturity; and (c) preparing a food product from the plant. In certain embodiments of the invention, the food product may be protein concentrate, protein isolate, meal, oil, flour or soybean hulls. In some embodiments, the food product may comprise beverages such as soymilk and other nutritional beverages, infused foods, sauces, condiments, salad dressings, fruit juices, syrups, desserts, icings and fillings, soft frozen products, confections or intermediate foods. Foods produced from the plants of the invention may comprise increased β-conglycinin content and thus be of greater nutritional value foods made with typical soybean varieties. Additionally, plants of the invention comprising decreased glycinin content may be used in food compositions requiring low amounts of insoluble protein.

Problems solved by technology

In the case of complex inheritance, such as with quantitative traits, including specifically glycinin content and yield, linkage will generally be much more difficult to discern.

RFLPs have the disadvantage of being labor-intensive in the typing stage, although this can be alleviated to some extent by multiplexing many of the tasks and reutilization of blots.

Identification of individuals that are genetically superior is difficult because genotypic value can be masked by confounding plant traits or environmental factors.

Therefore, the accurate identification of transgressive segregates or superior genotypes with the traits of interest is extremely difficult and its success is dependent on the plant breeder's ability to minimize the environmental variation affecting the expression of the quantitative character in the population.

For example, if a cross is made between cultivars differing in three complex characters, such as yield, β-conglycinin content and at least a first agronomic trait, it is extremely difficult without molecular tools to recover simultaneously by recombination the maximum number of favorable genes for each of the three characters into one genotype.

Lines that produce large numbers of embryos during an ‘induction’ step may not give rise to rapidly-growing proliferative cultures.

Formation of chimeras, resulting from transformation of only a single cell in a meristem, are problematic if the transformed cell is not adequately proliferated and does not give rise to germ-line tissue.

Biological limitations include the difficulty in developing proliferative embryogenic cultures and reduced fertility problems (culture-induced variation) associated with plants regenerated from long-term proliferative embryogenic cultures.

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