Climate-smart breeding for short-season soybean

Research Horizons in Plant Science presents an online seminar by invited guest speaker Dr Tanya Copely, CÉROM

Soybean is an economically important crop, accounting for over 70% of world protein consumption in 2015. In order to meet world needs, an expansion of the soybean growing region is required; however, agricultural expansion is limited in long day and short season regions. The identification of genes involved in soybean flowering and maturity is required to fully maximize the agricultural expansion of soybean. As part of a Genome Canada project, novel loci and genes controlling soybean maturity were identified in a foreign soybean population to identify maturity genes not currently being used in Canadian soybean breeding programs. Two novel regions were identified in the foreign population and are currently being integrated into the short-season breeding program at CÉROM for further validation. An expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) study is also underway to validate the regions in two distinct populations. In addition to identifying novel regions involved in soybean maturity, we have also investigated the role of
different known and highly utilized early gene allele combinations, particularly different combinations of the E1 to E4 genes, which strongly affect maturity and have been highly used in Canadian soybean breeding
programs. This study demonstrated that certain allele combinations were more favourable for certain Canadian environments.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Tanya Copley completed her B.Sc. in agriculture sciences at McGill University. Continuing at McGill, she completed her M.Sc. developing a multiplex test to identify and quantify two honey bee pathogens, Nosema apis and N. ceranae. She continued with her Ph.D. at McGill examining soybean-Rhizoctonia solani interactions using multi-omics approaches. She proceeded to complete her postdoctoral fellowship with Louise O’Donoughue at CÉROM, where she is examining the role of maturity genes in short season soybean with the goal to help expand the soybean growing region of Canada. She has since been promoted to a
research position in phytopathology.

To participate: online on Zoom

Meeting ID: 895 2894 3752