Study on the mutagenic effects in the soybean genome accelerates breeding

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Soybean (Glycine max (Linn.) Merr.) is a significant grain, oil, and food crop, originating in China. It is of vital strategic significance for the development of the national economy. In this study, we used an electron accelerator to treat Tianlong No.1 and Williams 82 soybean varieties with different doses of mutagenesis treatments, and Hyper-seq technology was used to rapidly detect the mutation loci in 321 radiated soybean M1 generation materials, and a total of 1,002,604 variant sites were detected, including 871,817 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 67,451 insertions (INSs), and 63,336 deletions (DELs), of which the number of SNPs accounted for about 87%. In addition, the Williams 82 soybean variety was more sensitive to radiation than the Tianlong No.1 soybean variety under the same radiation treatment and possessed more variable loci. Although soybeans originated in China, limitations in soybean varieties, planting patterns, and available planting areas have led to a situation where China's total soybean production falls short of meeting domestic demand. Consequently, imports have risen, posing a significant threat to China's food security. The results of this study provide a reference for the rapid screening of radiation mutagenesis materials, and through the in-depth analysis of the mutation loci, the response mechanism of soybean to radiation mutagenesis can be better understood, which will in turn accelerate the improvement of soybean varieties.