Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the dwarf soybean Minimax

Authors: SHAO, MIN - Oak Ridge Institute For Science And Education (ORISE); McCue, Kent; Thomson, James - Jim

Submitted to: Plants
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/26/2024
Publication Date: 4/2/2024
Citation: Shao, M., Mc Cue, K.F., Thomson, J.G. 2024. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of the dwarf soybean Minimax. Plants. 13(7). Article 1013. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13071013.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13071013

Interpretive Summary: The soybean 'MiniMax' is a miniature cultivar growing half the height of other varieties. It also has a faster generation time; approximately 3 months to seed harvest. This makes it a use 'lab line' that can be studied in the greenhouse rapidly and using less space than traditional varieties. Until now the MiniMax cultivar has been resistant to tissue culture transformation and genome modification. In this article we present the detailed protocol developed for MiniMax transformation.

Technical Abstract: Soybean is an important protein and oil seeds crop species, which faced lots of environmental stress to reduce soybean quality and quantity. It is a profitability pathway to develop biotech soybean with elaborated gene stacking to improve disease resistance, insect and herbicide tolerance. Minimax is a soybean mutant, whose growth cycle is around 90 days, half of the regular soybean growth cycle. It will be very useful for soybean biotech research if Minimax standard transformation protocol was developed. Here, we describe an efficient protocol for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation using mature Minimax seeds. This protocol has been successfully used to genetically engineer Minimax and acquired T1 seeds in around 140 d with 4.3% transgenic rate in our laboratory. This is the first report from mature soybean seeds to T1 seeds in a short period 140 d in soybean transformation. It will be very helpful for modifying soybean by gene stacking.