Professor Jianxin Ma and research scientist Jingbo Duan, both of Purdue’s Department of Agronomy, with soybean plants in a growth chamber. Their latest soybean research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Purdue University photo/Joshua Clark)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Scientists have discovered an evolutionary innovation in soybean plants that might improve crop yields if fine-tuned through alternative approaches such as gene editing, according to a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Legume-based crops can pull nitrogen from the air to meet their needs for growth through a process called biological nitrogen fixation,” said Purdue University’s Jianxin Ma, professor of agronomy and the Indiana Soybean Alliance Chair in Soybean Improvement. Soybean establishes a mutually beneficial relationship with soil bacteria called rhizobia through forming nodules — specialized root structures within which the bacteria fix nitrogen. “This study reports a new mechanism that promotes soybean nodulation, plant productivity and environmental resilience,” Ma said.
Ma co-led the study with Blake Meyers, a Distinguished Professor of Plant Sciences and director of the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis. Meyers described nodule formation (nodulation) in legumes as “hugely important for agriculture because of the elegant mechanism by which microbes supply accessible and necessary nitrogen for plant growth in exchange for the energy provided by the host plant via photosynthesis.”
Legumes, a large category of flowering plants, have evolved roughly 19,000 species over the last 60 million years. These include edible crops such as beans, lentils and peanuts. As a major protein source, soybeans play a critical role in global food security, Ma noted. Although people get most of their protein from livestock, animals get their protein from plants such as soybeans. “Whether we eat meat or plants, nearly all protein that humans consume ultimately comes from plants,” Ma said.
The soybean variety that Ma’s team used in this study, called Williams 82, was developed in the 1980s but is no longer used for crop production. The team observed that in this variety, modification of the biomechanism produces multiple benefits, including improved seed quality and higher protein content. Purdue’s Office of Technology Commercialization has signed multiple testing agreements with potential licensees to evaluate whether the technology can transfer such benefits to elite soybean varieties in crop production today.
Credited as co-first authors on the study were agronomy postdoctoral scientists Jingbo Duan, Jinbin Wang and Runze Guo. Also contributing were the University of Missouri’s Gary Stacey, along with W. Andy Tao and Natalia Dudareva, both professors in Purdue’s Department of Biochemistry. “This is truly a team effort,” Ma said.
Funding for the work came from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, United Soybean Board, Purdue AgSEED Program and the Indiana Soybean Alliance Inc.
“I’m particularly grateful to the soybean farmers in the U.S., including about 20,000 in Indiana,” Ma said. “We strive to convert their support into solutions that enhance farm profitability.”
Source: Purdue University
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