Roots are essential for water and nutrient uptake and crucial for plant health and yield. They play a critical role in soil health and the carbon balance of cropping systems. Roots not only anchor the plant in the soil but also influence soils and the environment in many ways, including through carbon input, soil stabilization, and by reducing soil erosion and fertilizer losses. The overall goal of this project is to identify and prioritize soybean root traits that can be targeted by breeders to enhance sustainability of soybean production, while at the same time increasing yields. Specifically, we will 1) establish how diverse environmental conditions influence key characteristics and functions of soybean root systems, and 2) whether breeding for yield has influenced these responses.
The project is progressing as planned. We are excited to have completed the first growing season at all four locations. We have collected biomass, root, and microbiome samples from the 2024 field experiments at all locations, including in Alabama, Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. Yields were determined at Alabama, Indiana, and Missouri, and seed subsamples were saved for composition analyses. Processing of the samples for the diverse analyses is ongoing. Shoot biomass samples have been submitted for mineral nutrient and isotope analyses, selected top-soil root architecture features have been extracted from image, root tissues have been embedded and imaging for extraction of anatomical traits has been initiated, protocol development for root compositional analysis has been completed and a subset of roots have been analyzed for different lignin fractions. Additionally, DNA has been extracted from the rhizosphere from roots collected at all four locations and preliminary results of the rhizosphere bacterial communities reveal differences among locations as well as among some cultivars at some of the four locations. With the field season just completed, our efforts are now shifting to processing and analyses of all the samples collected in the 2024 season.