The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded a $585,289 Project Grant under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program to Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) to develop soybean genotypes with reduced or removed trypsin inhibitor and lectin, which are antinutritional factors impacting animal feed efficiency.
The project aims to integrate advanced breeding techniques, including TILLING by sequencing, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, marker-assisted selection, and classical breeding, to create new soybean genetic resources with low levels of these antinutritional compounds. The expected outcomes are improved soybean cultivars that will be made available to breeding programs to enhance the nutritional quality of soybean meal for livestock feed, thereby increasing meat production efficiency in the U.S. Virginia Tech will collaborate with Southern Illinois University to conduct research on developing these novel soybean genotypes under a $42,383 grant sub-award.
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