Role of Public and Private Soybean Breeding Programs in the Development of Soybean Varieties Using Biotechnology

Biotechnology has been practiced by man since plants and animals were first domesticated thousands of years ago. Biotechnology in its most simplistic sense is the genetic modification of living organisms. Hence, all crop varieties grown today, including soybean, have had their DNA manipulated—the essence of biotechnology. More recently, biotechnology implies a deliberate manipulation of the DNA of living organisms, usually through the use of genetic engineering, in which genes are transferred via a vector from one organism to another, bypassing sexual reproduction. The revolution in plant biotechnology is and will be an important contributor to plant breeding programs, including soybean. Plant biotechnology depends upon a number of laboratory procedures that have been developed recently to manipulate DNA and provide new genes of interest to the plant breeder. These procedures have resulted in crop plants that have great commercial value, and many companies are marketing genetically engineered crop varieties. In addition, biotechnology has allowed scientists, as never before, to expand their visions of designing new crop plants to serve humankind. The first genetically engineered crop variety was the Flavr-Savr™ tomato, engineered for delayed ripening, which was released in 1994 (Sonnewald, 2003). The global area grown to genetically modified (GM) crops increased by 2002 to 145 million acres, which represents more than 5% of the land mass of the United States or China and almost two and one half times the total land mass of the United Kingdom (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, 2003). Four countries grew the most GM crops in 2002: The United States had the largest global total land area (66%), followed by Argentina (23%), Canada (6%), and China (4%). Herbicide-tolerant soybean was the principal GM crop grown in 2002, occupying 62% of the total global genetically engineered crop area, followed by GM corn (21%), GM cotton (12%), and GM canola (5%). During 2002, over 50% of the total global soybean production was GM, which was up from 46% in 2001. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® soybean was grown on 60 million acres (approximately 80% of the total soybean acreage) in the United States in 2002, up from nearly 55 million acres in 2001 (Shoemaker, Johnson, & Golan, 2003). In 2002, over half of the world’s human population resided in countries where GM crops were grown. Clearly, the trend in the world— and particularly in the United States—is increased acreage of GM crops, including soybean.