Available online at www.jibresearch.com

Soybean is one of the world’s most important sources of vegetable oil and protein meal. The results of plant breeding efforts have greatly improved the crop characteristics but genetic engineering offers new possibilities. Genetic transformation has tremendous potential in developing improved soybean varieties with desired agronomic traits, which are otherwise difficult to achieve through traditional breeding. Development of efficient in vitro regeneration system of soybean through tissue culture, and transformation protocol is the prerequisite for the adoption of de novo biotechnological approaches aiming at genetic manipulation. Such an alternative approach, for the development of improved soybean varieties is to introduce exogenous gene in soybean genome using gene transfer technique. However, the successful development of transgenic soybean depends upon an efficient plant regeneration protocol and its suitability to transformation techniques. During the last thirty years, significant progress has been made in soybean biotechnology, particularly in the area of transgenic technology. This review provides a detailed account of the advances made in the regeneration and genetic transformation of soybean and their potential applications.