With global climate change, soybean producers have been in the process of new crop problems. These have resulted in great economic losses. One of them is the formation of greenish seeds, in contrast to those of yellow color, suitable for commercialization.

This phenomenon is caused by chlorophyll retention in seed and grain due to climatic variations in crops, such as the occurrence of extreme temperatures and the lack of rain in the soybean seed development period. In addition, there are genetic factors, explains Edvaldo Aparecido Amaral da Silva, professor at the School of Agrarian Sciences at the Paulista State University (Unesp), botucatu campus.

"The green seed problem causes 10% loss in soybean production per year. This represents 36 million tons lost from grain and $12 billion in economic damage annually," Amaral said.

Best soybean seed

Through a project selected for one of the joint calls launched in bioeconomics, the researcher established a collaboration with colleagues from Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands and Embrapa Soja, with the objective of advancing the understanding of the basic mechanisms associated with chlorophyll degradation in oilseeds – one of the main limiting factors for the development of solutions to the green seed problem.

The project resulted in the development of molecular markers (SNPs). They make it possible to select early oilseed genotypes with tolerance to the formation of green seeds.

Thus, to develop the technology, the researchers analyzed the approximately 60,000 soy genes and found ten candidate genes. Then, one of them proved to be the most promising to avoid the problem of green seed.

"Our expectation is to reduce from thirteen to six years the waiting time to obtain a new soybean cultivar that does not present the problem of green seed," said Amaral da Silva.

Renewal of scientific cooperation

FAPESP and NWO have maintained a scientific cooperation agreement since 2012. It had its renovation in early November 2022 for another five years.

The aim of the partnership is to stimulate collaboration in long-term research between Brazil and the Netherlands. This is done by financing joint research to strengthen the international position in science of countries and the overall impact of the results.

Source: Canal Rural