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Intro: This is a GRDC podcast.

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Hilary Sims: Hi there, I’m Hilary Sims. An ambitious GRDC investment being led by the University of Adelaide is working to develop and deliver new high yielding soybean varieties for a broader range of growing environments. Worth $6 million in total, this new investment builds on the achievements of past breeding programs and will accelerate the delivery of new varieties to growers by ‘speed breeding’ - harnessing new technology to improve germplasm evaluation and other key breeding processes. In this podcast, I speak with lead breeder, Dr Anh Pham. Anh’s a researcher at the University of Adelaide and has extensive knowledge of molecular breeding, crop improvement and genetics in both soybean and barley. We’ll also hear from grower and Soybean Industry Development Officer at Soy Australia Judy Plath, on the significance of the project, and what new traits growers are keen to see included in the breeding program. To start off, I caught up with Dr Anh Pham to learn more about how the project will unfold – here’s Anh.

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Anh Pham: Back in 2023, University Adelaide already started its own soybean breeding program to develop materials that suits the South Australian environment, particularly the longer day length that we have in South Australia during the growing seasons. We conducted trials to assess maturity of 180 lines from the Australian Green Gene Bank to maturity fit. Once we found out that the tender for soybean breeding for Australia released by GRDC, we built a team of experts from different fields such as breeding, genetics, statistical analysis, food and beverage product development. And as our vision aligned with GRDC's, we got the tender.

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Hilary Sims: And Anh, what's the aim of the latest breeding program? What are some of the focus areas you're looking at?

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Anh Pham: The first aim is to develop varieties that have higher yields than the current varieties being grown in Australia. In addition, we will target maturity fit, including both earlier maturities and delay maturities. For early maturity, we want to give farmers flexibility to use soybean as a rotation crop. At present, some sugarcane farming system use soybean as a green manure, but they do not have assets for the grains since the time to maturity is too long to be viable, More often, they favour mungbeans over soybean because it matures rapidly and can be harvested for grains just after 90 days. Even though mungbeans do not provide added benefit to soil health and have lower yield than soybeans only one tonne per hectare. Thus, shorter maturities, while maintaining yield at a profitable level of at least two to three tonnes per hectare, in addition to additional benefits to the soil, will help improve adoption rates of soybean at a rotation crop over mungbeans in sugarcane farming systems. For delay maturity, we hope that it will help improve yield. We also make sure that all future varieties will meet minimum requirements of the industry and end users in terms of seed quality traits such as reduced beany flavour, improved gelling capacity for human consumption purposes.

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Hilary Sims: It's certainly a very ambitious project. So what does the research look like in a practical sense? What are the timelines for development of these new varieties?

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Anh Pham: We have put together selections of a diversity panels of nearly 200 lines, and this will be used for identification of genomic regions that are responsible for different maturity rates in main growing regions of soybean in New South Wales and Queensland. We're also developing populations that were segregated for earliest genes and also late maturity genes. In the current high yielding genetic backgrounds, whole genome sequencing of ten commercial soybean varieties currently being grown in Australia was completed, and we are checking for differences in key genes controlling maturities, gelling capacity for tofu, seed characteristics like hilum, and seed coat color. It is planned that the first yield trial assessing the materials generated from the previous breeding program will commence in summer 2025-2026.

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Hilary Sims: And so Anh, what does success in this program look like for you?

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Anh Pham: I think success in our team's view, is that in 10 years, Australian soybean production will be at least two to three times higher, with expanding regions such as central and northern Queensland to South Australia. Farmers will have more choices of varieties that will be suitable to their needs. Either shorter maturity to suit crop rotations or longer maturity with higher yield. These varieties also will have seed compositions and characteristics that minimum industry requirements for human consumption markets. Thus, offering higher returns such as higher protein minimum is 40 per cent and 42 per cent for tofu, yellow seed coat and hilum, and excellent gelling capacity.

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Hilary Sims: And just to finish up, what are your key messages to growers at this stage?

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Anh Pham: We are very keen to hear from farmers about the problem that farmers are facing, so please do not hesitate to contact us. It will help shape the directions of the breeding program. Our primary goal is to develop new varieties that suit your needs, but we need to know what the needs are. So we are working on engaging with growers and end users as much as possible to develop a good understanding of what you need.

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Judy Plath: We're predominantly sugarcane farmers in the Wide Bay region of Queensland. We grow soybeans in rotation with sugarcane, so basically every year we're taking out maybe 20 per cent of our cane crop to have a fallow program. And the soybeans are an absolutely vital part of that program.

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Hilary Sims: That’s my next guest – grower and Soybean Industry Development Officer at Soy Australia Judy Plath. Judy and her husband have a strong and successful history of growing soybeans and advocating their benefits in a sugarcane system. Having moved away from conventional tillage, the Plaths now use a zero tillage farming system to help ensure they can plant soybeans every year. Judy has been involved in the soybean breeding program from an industry and grower perspective and joins me now to share her thoughts on what new traits are needed to boost the Australian soybean industry. She starts by explaining how soybeans fit into her program and what the main benefits are. Here’s Judy.

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Judy Plath: Well, how our system works is we typically come out of sugarcane somewhere from June through to Christmas, and we then want to get the sugarcane crop out of there and put a legume break crop in, because obviously sugarcane is a grass crop. We want a legume break crop to break the pest and disease cycle. And what we've got now is a bulletproof farming system, really, where we can cut cane at whatever time that works with our milling program and still get the soybeans in. And so we're using our traditional grain planter. It's just a standard grain planter, a Northolm planter. But my husband got some fluted coulters engineered by a local chap that he's got mounted in front of the double disc openers on the planter. This coulter system works very well at cutting through the cane trash to allow then the double disc openers to come along behind and essentially make direct contact with the soil immediately. We then are able to place the seed where we want it to be. We then have the benefit of keeping the trash on the soil, which conserves soil moisture. It suppresses weeds. It returns organic matter to the soil as it breaks down. For us as cane farmers, the soybeans are there for two reasons one, most importantly, to break the pest and disease cycle for our main crop, being sugarcane. But secondly, to provide an income for us, especially at a time of year when we're not having an income from our other crop.

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Hilary Sims: So, Judy, tell me a bit more about your involvement in the national soybean breeding program and what the significance of this program is for the industry.

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Judy Plath: Over the years, we've been involved in the previous soybean breeding program, which was funded by GRDC In partnership with CSIRO and New South Wales DPI. And that was a fantastic program that helped deliver new varieties to the soybean industry. And one of the great successes of that program was Heyman, which is a variety that is well suited to a lot of our different farming systems, but also has been very well accepted in the marketplace. So it's very popular with tofu manufacturers. It's great for soy flour, it's great for soy milk. So it was really exciting to see GRDC commit to the new Australian breeding program in partnership with the University of Adelaide. That has just been a huge boom to the soybean industry, and growers throughout the industry have been really excited to see that new program get started. I suppose we're all hoping that this program will help us futureproof the industry, so to speak, to make sure that we've got a new Heyman coming through the system. Or in other region, we've had other successful varieties like Richmond or Burrinjuck that are better suited to other growing areas. Again, we want to be making sure we've got potential replacement varieties coming through the system.

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Hilary Sims: And what are some of the traits you're hoping these new varieties have?

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Judy Plath: So the Australian soybean industry as a whole has focused on higher value markets such as tofu, soy flour, soy milk, etc. The food industry, essentially. It's really important that whatever new varieties come out of the breeding program have the trait that the food grade market is looking for. So if it's tofu, it's gelling quality, it's protein content. For the bakery industry, it's got to have the right characteristics to suit breads and muffins and what have you where it's being used. Soy milk, it's got to have the right taste, texture, protein, etc. so we're really keen to see early interaction between the breeding program and end users to make sure that that feedback about the quality characteristics is flowing readily into the breeding program, so that any potential new varieties have the right characteristics from the get go. Then, from a grower point of view, yield is king as we hear in every industry, and soybeans are no different. So we're certainly looking for varieties that at least match the yields of our high performing varieties at the moment. But ultimately, we'd love to see varieties with even better yield potential. And it is really important because we're a relatively small industry in the Australian grain sector. It's important that our varieties have good adaptation for different growing environments. Agronomically, we'd love to see a variety that is relatively able to cope with the vagaries of the weather, and the last two years have really shown us that soybeans are incredibly well adapted to wet weather. They've tolerated the low sunlight that we had through all this cloudy, overcast weather. Essentially, they've kept going where other crops may have turned up their heels and given up. So we want to see our new varieties coming through that have that same kind of resilience that are a tough soybean variety, that can handle the vagaries of the weather.

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Hilary Sims: That was grower and Soybean Industry Development Officer at Soy Australia Judy Plath - and before her was Dr Anh Pham from the University of Adelaide. More information on this topic can be found in the description box, or online at GRDC.com.au. I’m Hilary Sims and you’ve been listening to a GRDC podcast.