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Game-changing soybean breeding tools

The research director of an independent seed company says a gamechanger is emerging in soybean breeding technology.

Dennis Schultze with Peterson Farms Seed tells Brownfield Crisper Cas-9 is a selection-type gene editing tool that’s been equated to building a wall out of Lego blocks.

“So what they can do now, very precisely, is go in and extract a Lego block, like Rps1-k gene, and now they can insert a new block which would be something like an Rps3-a gene for phytopthora.”

He says it would be the same soybean variety with a phytopthora root rot improvement.

“For the farmers out there, more and more of these new varieties will be fully-loaded SCN, even new SCN packages, Rps genes for phytopthora (and) SDS.”

Schultze expects Crisper Cas-9 gene editing to result in fully-loaded disease traited, high yielding soybean varieties that he says has been a struggle to put together in one package using earlier breeding technologies.

Peterson Farms Seed is based near Fargo, North Dakota, serving customers in the Dakotas and Minnesota.