Soybeans are the world's largest source of animal protein feed and the second largest source of vegetable oil. The United States is the leading soybean producer and exporter. Increasing yield and reducing the cost of production is imperative to increase soybean production in the Southeast. Weeds are a major production problem in the southeastern region and development of herbicide tolerant cultivars with pest resistance will help farms control weeds and reduce production cost.
Using Monsanto (Bayer now) 2nd generation glyphosate tolerance technology–RR2 Yield®, we have developed strong pipeline materials of soybean. Three RR2Y cultivars were released in 2014 and one RR2Y cultivar released in 2016. Currently, three RR2Y lines (MG VI, VII and VIII) have been yield tested in the regional trials for 2-3 years, which exceeded the yield of commercial checks for 5-17%, respectively. Recently, the control of glyphosate-tolerant weeds in RR soybeans (i.e., palmer amaranth) has become a serious soybean production problem in the USA, especially in the southeastern region of the USA.
To provide soybean growers with advanced herbicide-tolerance technologies for better weed control, we have accessed to LibertyLink technology from BASF in 2010, RR2 Xtend technology from Bayer, and Enlist E3 technology from Corteva in 2019. These new technologies employ multiple modes of action against the most difficult weeds and provide excellent weed control in soybean production. Coupling with strong soybean genetics developed at UGA, these technologies will provide Southeastern soybean growers with the opportunity to use the efficient and cost-effective herbicide technology with high yield performance. The Objective of this proposal is to accelerate development of soybean varieties with advanced herbicide-tolerance technologies (RR2 Xtend, Enlist E3 and LibertyLink) as well as pest resistance using state-of-art genomic technology.