C2—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, luna 2,1984
Ever since the phenomenal
success of hybrid corn in boosting
crop yields, plant breeders have
been searching for ways to
hybridize other crops. So far, they
haven’t had a lot of luck.
The hybrid corn story has been
told and retold as one of the great
success stories of agricultural
research. Those plant breeders of
the 1930’5, who turned that period’s
25 and 30 bushel corn yields into
today’s 100 bushels plus per acre,
set the pace for others who
followed. But the knowledge
gained with hybrid corn isn’t easily
transferred to other crops, par
ticularly soybeans.
It's been generally assumed that
average soybean yields around 30
bushels per acre would increase
dramatically if the hybrid process
could be introduced. And that our
national average would skyrocket
the way of hybrid corn, if the plant
breeders could just get it all
together.
But it’s not that easy, according
to Randy Nelson, a University of
Illinois agronomist, who recently
completed a research project on
hybrid soybeans. He says it’s not
just a matter of producing a hybrid
bean, but producing one that is
better than pure lines. He also
p«'nt“ ‘he hybrid corn
success story didn’t happen
overnight. It was the result of 30 or
40 years of research, and Nelson
says that maybe great soybean
Yields through hybridization will
be possible in the future. But right
now, the practical restraints are
overwhelming.
A hybrid is an offspring of
genetically unlike parents
Hybrids are produced by inter
planting selected male sterile and
male fertile plants. Cross
pollination of male sterile plants
by pollen from male fertile plants
leads to hybrid seed formation.
Two major obstacles prevent the
commercial use of hybrid
soybeans. First, soybeans are self
pollinated. That means that both
the male and female parts are
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present on the same flower. Pollen
that is produced by such a flower
also pollinates that flower, so the
first step in producing a hybrid is
to prevent self-pollination. Then
there's the problem of moving
pollen from the pollen parent to the
seed parent. The Illinois resear
cher says chemical, genetic, or
cytoplasmic methods of preven
ting self-pollination in the seed
parents is needed before hybrid
soybean seed can be produced on a
commercial scale.
In 1971, the first male sterile
gene was found in soybeans and
since then several more have been
found. These genes prevent viable
pollen from being formed. As a
research tool, that enables
scientists to get some plants that
are male sterile. But with this
method, at best only half will be
male sterile and half fertile. So this
requires pulling out at least half
the plants, the ones that are fertile.
To do this, a researcher has to look
at the individual flowers of each
soybean plant to see if they’re
shedding pollen. It’s very time
consuming and therefore not
practical on a commercial basis.
Another method, cytoplasmic
sterility, which exists in corn, may
be discovered in soybeans, but that
hasn’t happened yet.
And even if a mechanism is
discovered for obtaining male
sterile soybean plants, there’s the
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