Update:
View uploaded report 
July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020 Annual Report: Breeding of Glyphosate-Resistant Soybean Cultivars
Principal Investigator: Dr. Ted Helms, Department of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University – Cooperating Scientists: Dr. Berlin Nelson, Department of Plant Pathology, North Dakota State University
Growers would like to purchase glyphosate-resistant soybean varieties and be able to save their own seed for planting the next year. These varieties need to high-yielding, lodging-resistant, tolerant to iron-deficiency chlorosis (IDC), and have good disease and pest resistance. Soybean varieties are protected by a patent on the glyphosate-resistant gene (construct) and often protected by a second patent on the variety. Monsanto has provided a website to explain these issues (http://www.soybeans.com/patent.aspx). The purpose of this research is to provide superior glyphosate-resistant varieties that have been developed by North Dakota State University (NDSU). At this time, one glyphosate-resistant soybean variety that was developed by NDSU is available to growers, which is named ND17009GT. ND17009GT is a 00.9 maturity cultivar.
Glyphosate-resistant experimental lines have been developed by the NDSU Soybean Breeding Project. Crosses were initiated in the summer of 2010 and new crosses have been initiated in every subsequent year. As part of the continuing process of developing new lines, 3,807 plant-rows were planted in the spring of 2019. In the fall of 2019, 438 glyphosate-resistant plant rows were harvested. Fewer glyphosate-resistant plant-rows were harvested in the fall of 2019 that would normally be the case. This is because in the fall of 2019, too much of our Casselton, ND nursery was flooded and our entire Prosper, ND nursery site was flooded. This explains why so few plant-rows were selected for testing for yield in replicated plots during the 2020 growing season. In the 2019 growing season, the first year of replicated yield testing was conducted for 1440 new glyphosate-resistant, experimental lines. In the 2019 growing season, 88 experimental lines were tested for the second year of yield evaluation. Seventeen experimental lines were advanced to the third or fourth year of yield testing in the 2019 growing season. These advanced, experimental lines vary in maturity from a 00.7 to a 0.9 maturity.
The benefit to the North Dakota soybean industry would be to reduce the cost of soybean seed for varieties that are glyphosate-resistant. This would reduce input costs because growers could save their own seed of glyphosate-resistant soybean varieties that were developed at NDSU. They could then plant this seed without paying a technology fee. At present, farmers must purchase expensive new seed each year.