Into the wild: The soybean genome meets its undomesticated relative

Abstract

Soybean (Glycine max) is one of the most widely grown crop species in the world. One of the major agricultural challenges of the 21st century will be to increase the yield of soybean and other major crop species to feed a growing population on a finite amount of farmland. Soybean breeding and improvement is hindered by a narrow domesticated germplasm relative to other crop species (1). Despite its importance, many outstanding questions remain regarding important aspects of soybean germplasm, including the extent of genomic variation within the domesticated germplasm and among domesticated and wild relatives. Glycine soja is the closest extant wild relative of soybean and is generally considered to be the undomesticated progenitor of the domesticated soybean. G. max and G. soja are phenotypically disparate in many ways, but they readily cross with one another and give rise to fertile hybrids, thus making G. soja a promising source of novel genes and alleles for soybean breeding and improvement.