New UGA Soybean Varieties

There is a renewed interest in soybean production in the Southeast, due to the increase in value of a bushel of soybeans primarily driven by the demand for soybeans as a feedstock for the production of biodiesel. Since cost-effective weed control is an important consideration for southeastern soybean growers, a backcross breeding program was initiated to introduce glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup® herbicide) tolerance into the previously developed UGA soybean varieties: Benning, Haskell, Boggs and Prichard. The application of DNA marker selection hastened the recovery of the yield and pest resistances of these adapted soybean varieties. Two additional years of field testing identified Roundup Ready® versions of Benning, Haskell, Boggs and Prichard. These four newly developed Roundup Ready® varieties were equal to their non-Roundup Ready® parent in seed yield, seed composition, and disease resistance. Recently, two additional varieties have been created by forward crossing a high yield soybean to these backcross-derived Roundup Ready® varieties. The UGA Research Foundation, in collaboration with the Georgia Seed Development Commission, licensed the marketing rights of these Roundup Ready® varieties to AgSouth Genetics (AGS 758RR, AGS Prichard RR and AGS Boggs RR), UniSouth Genetics (USG 7732nRR), the Monsanto Company (Dekalb H7242RR), and Pioneer (P 97M50). In 2005 and 2006 these varieties were grown on more than 300,000 acres and were planted in more than 80 percent of Georgia's soybean fields.