Evaluation of Agronomic and Seed Quality Traits in Conventional High Oleic Soybeans.

Soybean oil with high oleic acid (>80%) has increased oxidative stability that is valuable for food, fuel, and industrial products. There is little information available about the relationship of seed yield and trait source in non-genetically modified high oleic soybeans. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of naturally occurring mutant FAD2-1A and FAD2-1B alleles on seed yield and seed quality. A population of 48 BC₃F_2:4 lines (93.75% genome commonality) belonging to 1 of 4 oleic groups was generated using molecular markers. Each group has a different combination of homozygous wild-type and mutant genes for FAD2-1A and FAD2-1B (AABB, AAbb, aaBB, aabb). This produced the following concentrations (%) of oleic acid: AABB = 28.3, AAbb = 34.8, aaBB = 44.9, and aabb = 87.2. The oleic groups evaluated at 3 locations did not differ significantly in seed yield from each other nor from wild type high yielding checks (p>0.05). For example, the double mutant oleic group (3,508 kg ha^-1) produced seed yield equivalent to the normal oleic group (3,513 kg ha^-1). Thus, it seems likely to generate conventional high oleic soybeans without yield drag using mutant FAD2-1A and FAD2-1B sources PI 603452 and PI 283327.