Creating Conventional Soybeans with the High Oleic Acid Seed Oil Trait.

Commodity soybeans are poised to undergo a revolutionary change.  Major shifts in market expectations for the nutritional quality of the oil, brought about in part through food labeling requirements and the suitability for biodiesel, are driving the commodity soybean to embrace new seed compositional qualities.  Using conventional soybean breeding technology without transgenics, we created novel combinations of two genes responsible for the accumulation of oleic acid in soybean seed oil to develop soybean seeds with the high oleic acid trait. The trait was stable across multiple environments and could be efficiently incorporated into new lines to accelerate soybean variety development.  The impact of this research is the availability of technology to create high oleic acid soybean cultivars that can meet the expectations of the new commodity oil market.