Abstract Vegetable soybean Glycine max (L.) Merr., commonly known as edamame, is harvested at the R6 growth stage as green pods and beans, offering a rich source of protein, oil, fiber, and essential nutrients. While US market demand for edamame has increased over the past two decades, there is a lack of available domestic products compared to those imported from East Asia, underscoring the need for improved cultivars regionally adapted to the United States. In this study, 223 large‐seeded soybean accessions were evaluated in a field near Fayetteville, AR, in 2023 and 2024 for key traits related to edamame quality, including five appearance traits (R6 10‐pod, R6 10‐bean, and R8 10‐seed weights; R6 pod/R6 bean and R6 bean/R8 seed weight ratios), two taste‐related traits (sucrose and alanine contents), and four nutritional traits (protein, oil, fiber, and amino acid profiles). Based on these phenotypic traits and population structure, 30 elite accessions with superior and diverse trait combinations were identified as a core germplasm set to support edamame breeding for US production regions. Genome‐wide association study detected 33 single‐nucleotide polymorphisms significantly associated with appearance traits, while genomic prediction models demonstrated moderate to high accuracies, with BayesA and genomic best linear unbiased prediction consistently performing best across traits. These findings provide preliminary genetic and genomic resources to support the development of regionally adapted, high‐quality edamame cultivars for the expanding US market.
Wu et al. (2026) studied this question.