ABSTRACT
Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is the leading oil and protein crop of the world, which is used primarily as a source of high quality oil for the crushing industry and of protein from the meal used to produce live stock feed. Soybean seeds, on the average, are composed of 20% oil, 40% protein, 35% carbohydrates, and 5% ash (Liu, 1999). Therefore, the energy value of whole soybeans, or compounds extracted from them, makes it a high energy and nutrition source for both man and animals. Besides its nutritional value, soybeans have been recognized for millen nia in China as having medicinal properties (Morse, 1950), although the compounds involved were not known until recently. Some of the health benefits come from the peptides that make the soy protein or from the fatty acids that constitute the seed oil. Other health benefits of soybean come from compounds that are present in small amounts but show abil ity to enhance people’s health or significantly reduce incidence of chronic diseases. For such properties, these compounds are usually re ferred to as nutraceuticals or functional food. To fully utilize the health benefits of soybeans, much research has been conducted to further im prove the seed characteristics by enhancing, through breeding, the lev els of the desirable compounds or reducing the undesirable ones.
