b'STUDY SHEDS LIGHT ONTHE IMPORTANCE OF SNPASTA members collaborate to publish a paper to establish methods using molecular markers in soybean cultivars.Marc ZienkiewiczTHE SEED INDUSTRYhas an important new tool and data set for consideration during Plant Variety Protection (PVP) application review.A scientific paper drafted by a team of American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) members has been published in the Crop Science Journal. "Single nucleotide polymorphisms facilitate distinctness-uniformity-stability testing of soybean cultivars for plant variety protection" is open access and available for down-load on ASTAs website.The teammade up of researchers from Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, the University of Illinois, Iowa State University and an independent contractor from Iowaset out to establish methodologies using molecular markers to facilitate distinctness, uniformity, and stable (DUS) reproduction testing in soybean cultivars while maintaining current intellectual property protection (IPP) levels. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), a type of molecular marker, along with morphological, physiological, and pedigree information were used to examine over 300 cultivars in this study.Associations for SNP and pedigree kinship data were found to be very similar throughout the cultivars. The SNP and pedi-gree data suggested that DUS challenges among U.S. soybean cultivars were not caused by the lack of genetic diversity in F2 breeding populations. The team was ultimately able to maintain IPP, level the playing field for breeders, and potentially make the process of using molecular data more efficient withoutAbigail Struxness is ASTAs senior director of International adding costs. Programs and Policy.Analysis of the plants genomic information can be used to prove that a crop fulfills the distinctness criteria as part of theIt\'s important to note that research which utilizes genetic PVP authorities review of distinctness, uniformity, and stabil- data to establish thresholds for distinctness in PVP testing must ity, says Abigail Struxness, ASTAs senior director, Internationalbe done on a crop-by-crop basis only, Struxness adds.Programs and Policy.Furthermore, data thresholds were established with the The project was initiated by ASTA member companies inexpress intention for use by PVP authorities in their inspection 2015 after concerns that morphological characteristics, visuallyof DUS criteria in a soybean variety application. This project observed, may conclude that two varieties were not distinctprovides a model for the research process if additional research when in fact they are. were to be conducted on other crops.SW116/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2020'