b'S T R A T E G Y A featured segment designed to help you in the realm of retail seed sales. A Trait for Every TrendStaying ahead of the market with soybeans.Melissa ShipmanWITH SOYBEANS ASone of the fastest growing crop systems, seed compa-nies are investing in research and development while grow-ers are tasked with making seed decisions. Trends, traits and treatments change yearly, and staying current is key to staying competitive on both sides of the market.Its a critical aspect and growers only get one shot a year. We have to make sure we get it right, says Ryan Fuller, soybean strategic mar-keting for Syngenta.Now, data is collected on everything, from soil informa-tion to weather, even biotic and abiotic stress. Even moreSoybean farmers have around 40 to 50 decisions to make each year on the crop. PHOTO CREDIT: KURT RAHEsignificant are the tools and capabilities to take that dataproduction cycle times, pro- tolerance, for example. Youre starting with a and turn it into informationducing multiple generations inYouve got all these stackssmaller pool, but that pool has that can drive the decision- a single year. Processes havegoing into a line, and basi- already been really selected making process.shifted to be more efficient,cally all the traits are passeddown, and then you fine tune Over their career, therestarting with better predictiveinto that line at one time,as you go through the devel-may be only 30 or 40 chancesmodels and increased geneticversus multiple traits beingopment stages, Fuller says. to get this right, and harness- understanding. passed through separately,Testing has also been fine-ing all that data and turning itBreeders are workingKavanaugh says. tuned for success; for exam-into information has been onewith marker assisted breedingple, by manually adding water of the biggest changes thatsthese days, so they under- Precision Breeding to an already saturated field to happened over the last fivestand exactly what the prod- Precision breeding has been atest for Phytophthora root rot. years, Fuller says. uct is that were working withgame changer. We made a targeted effort before they even start breed- It truly was a numbersto find locations to install Speeding Up Successing, says Mike Kavanaugh,game for a lot of years. Thecertain capabilities, whether Varieties are added each yeardirector of product develop- more lines you could screen,its the ability to irrigate or to the list growers can choosement for AgReliant Genetics. the more you could select,mist to create that perfect from. New lines used to beAnd breeders are able toFuller says.environment so that we can in production for six to eightuse molecular stacks, includ- Its possible to stack thereliably screen our germplasm years, but that process hasing Dicamba, Roundup andodds by increasing the com- through the development been cut in half.Liberty tolerance together, ormercial probability early in thepipeline, make early selections Breeders have shortened2,4-D, Liberty and Roundupprocess. and characterize our varieties 52/ SEEDWORLD.COMFEBRUARY 2022'