ABSTRACT
Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] was domesticated in northeastern China about 2500 BC and subsequently spread to southern China, Korea, Japan, and other countries in South-Eastern Asia. Soybean was introduced into the US during the 1700s and was grown initially as a forage crop (Hymowitz 1990, 2004). It was only in the 1920s and 1930s that it was used as a grain crop. Early US plant breeders, mostly from the Agricultural Experiment Stations of the states and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), developed lodging-and shattering-resistant varieties, which were responsible for changing soybean from a forage crop to an oilseed crop. Variety development remained largely with the USDA and Agricultural Experiment Stations until 1970 when the Plant Variety Protection Act was passed. With the passage of this act, commercial variety development began as private breeders could protect their intellectual property (proprietary varieties), which provided them an opportunity to capture additional financial resources to conduct large, comprehensive, and expensive soybean breeding programs. Today, most of the variety development of soybean occurs in the private sector; however, public sector breeders still have an important role to play in variety development. In addition to variety development, public sector breeders place emphasis on germplasm enhancement, breeding methodology and molecular technology development, and education of students who become professional plant breeders. In the future, the productivity of modern agriculture will depend largely on the ability of breeders to constantly adapt new varieties to changing environmental conditions and management strategies.
