Biochemical components such as starch, oil, and protein content can be important determinants of a crop’s value. Increasing the nutritional value of crop plants by developing high protein varieties has been a goal of plant breeders. In soybeans, protein content accounts for the majority of their compositional value. It has been argued that low protein soybeans are costing the soybean industry as a whole due to discounted pricing for U.S. soybeans, which are comparatively low-protein, on the world market. Recent poultry feeding studies (Baker et al. in Poultry Science 90: 390-395, 2011) showed that soybean meal produced from high protein or low oligosaccharide soybeans could be fed in smaller amounts to chickens since they have a greater nutritional value than soybean meal produced from conventional varieties of soybeans.
As part of an ongoing research effort to understand the regulation of composition in plants, ISU researchers developed transgenic soybean lines carrying the Arabidopsis QQS gene, whose over-expression leads to significantly increased protein content and decreased starch in mature soybean seeds. Consequently, the QQS gene may have utility for creating elite soybean lines with enhanced value for end-user applications such as poultry and livestock feed. This technology may also enable the development of other high protein crops, such as rice or corn.

File Number: ISURF #3844 

Web site: http://www.techtransfer.iastate.edu/en/for_indu...

Other Information:

See Supporting Information