Australian technology helps create triple-seeding soybeans

A soybean variety developed in collaboration with James Cook University could double yields for Vietnamese farmers.

Crop scientists from Australia and Vietnam have produced plants that will grow, flower and seed three times a year rather than only in sumnmer like traditional soybean strains.

Australian Variety 95389 was designed to complement Vietnam's rice-based cropping system and, like all legumes, is a natural fertiliser, says Tropical Crop Science Professor Robert Lawn.

Prof. Lawn said the greatest challenge in creating a soybean strain that would seed three times a year was overriding the plant's internal regulator. "The basic problem is that most varieties have been adapted for growing over the summer, but if you want to grow them over the autumn or spring, their seeding gets all confused.

"So what we've done is taken a gene called a long juvenile gene and backcrossed it into soybean lines that are normally very, very early flowering. The main thing that's really novel about it is the physiological understanding of the plant's photo-periodic response.

"The new varieties are producing yields in our trials of up to 3 tonnes per hectare, which is twice the yield potential of existing varieties."

Item provided courtesy of James Cook University