Preface

Soybean is one of the most important and valuable agricultural crops. Owing to its high nutritive value and versatility soybean offers resources to address world food issues through current and future utilization practices. Rapid increases of soybean demand in the last decade challenge the reliability of supply, stock levels, and reasonable pricing. Future soybean production is expected to increase steadily in proportion to increased demand. This book presents the importance of applying of novel genetics and breading technologies. The efficient genotype selections and gene transformations provide for generation of new and improved soybean cultivars, resistant to disease and environmental stresses. The book introduces also a few recent modern techniques and technologies for detection of plant stress and characterization of biomaterials as well as for processing of soybean food and oil products. The contributions are organized in two sections based on genetics researches and novel technical practices. Each of the sections covers a wide range of topics and the authors are from countries all over the world. This underlines the global significance of soybean research. I am certain that the book will provoke interest to many readers and researchers, who could find information useful for advancing their fields.

**Prof. Dora Krezhova** 

Space and Solar-Terrestrial Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Bulgaria

**Part 1** 

**Genetics and Breeding** 

**Part 1** 

**Genetics and Breeding** 

**1** 

*Egypt*

**Genetic Diversity and Allele Mining** 

Soybean, *Glycine max* (L.) Merrill is recognized as the most important grain legume in the world in terms of total production and international trade (Golbitz, 1995), being an important source of protein and oil. There are developing thousands of breeding lines and hundreds of elite cultivars yearly in the soybean hybridization programmes over the world. The developing of these breeding lines increased genetic uniformity in the frame of species. Therefore, the genetic basis of these released cultivars is rather narrow. Generations of new and improved cultivars can be enhanced by new sources of genetic variation; therefore criteria for parental stock selection need to be considered not only by agronomic value, but also from the point of view of their genetic dissimilarity. That is why the evaluation of genetic variation is a very important task not only for population genetics but also for plant breeders. The study of genetic variation has fallen within population genetics which has focused on analyzing, measuring and partitioning genetic. The genetic diversity can be analyzed by agronomic and biochemical traits, and molecular marker polymorphisms, Analysis of gene marker data enables estimation of the mating system and monitoring of genetic changes caused by factors affecting the reproductive biology of a species. A key factor driving utilization of exotic germplasm is potential benefit. Benefit can be quite apparent for characteristics such as disease resistance or agronomic traits, but vague for

Scholars generally agree that cultivated soybean (*Glycine max*) has originated in the eastern half of North China in the eleventh century B.C. or perhaps a bit earlier (Fukuda, 1933 and Singh, 2010). It is believed on world wide scale that soybean has been domesticated from the annual wild soybean *Glycine soja* Sieb.*et* Zucc. Many studies based on old Chinese literature, the geographic distribution of the wild ancestral species, the levels and types of genetic diversity of soybean varieties and the archeological evidence consistently indicated that China is the origin and diversification center of the cultivated soybean (Fukuda, 1933; Hymowitz, 1970; Zhuang, 1999). The evidences that China is the origin and main center of diversity of soybean are (1) the distribution of *G. soja* in China is the most extensive in terms of the numbers and diversity of types; (2) China has the earliest written records of soybean cultivation, about 4500 years ago; (3) soybean has been found in unearthed artifacts; (4)

**1. Introduction** 

yield or abiotic stress resistance.

**2. Origin and diversification center of the soybean** 

*Tanta University, Faculty of Science, Botany Department* 

**in Soybean Germplasm** 

Reda Helmy Sammour
