Year in and year out drought proves to be one of the greatest stresses facing soybeans in South Carolina which is why Clemson University is breeding soybean varieties with drought-tolerant traits.

Speaking at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center Field Day Sept. 13 in Florence, Ben Fallen, Clemson’s soybean breeder, said his program is looking to varieties that offer nitrogen fixation and slow wilt, two traits identified in soybeans for drought tolerance.

In his breeding work, Fallen is using slow wilting phenotypes that have been documented. “We wait until the drought symptoms have been documented in fast wilting lines and go through each plot, plot-by-plot, and give them a ranking of one to five: one being no symptoms and five being severe symptoms expressed through drought,” Fallen explained at the field day.

In addition to drought tolerance, Clemson is seeking to breed varieties that offer good yield, herbicide tolerance and disease resistance. Testing is conducted across South Carolina to ensure that when a variety comes to market, it has been well tested in multiple environments.

“We look at agronomic traits, nematode screening, stem canker and other diseases as well. We have quality traits. We are trying to improve the yield composition, the oil composition and the general composition of the bean itself to make a better value added product,” Fallen said. The ultimate goal is to make sure varieties are high yielding, well tested and acclimated for South Carolina.

“This year we are doing irrigated, dryland and drought OVTs (Official Variety Tests) on the station. We’re looking at the same varieties, just three different testing environments. We are really excited to see the results from that drought study. It looks really rough in some spots, but the irrigated trial looks amazing. You can see a lot of differences,” he said.

Fallen said Clemson is also increasing the genetic diversity of its varieties with germplasm from throughout the southeastern United States as well as the Midwest, Brazil, Paraguay, Sweden, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Australia. “This allows us to screen for new traits that we can incorporate into the program,” he explained.

Attendees of the Pee Dee Research and Education Center Field Day in Florence learn about efforts to improve drought tolerance in South Carolina soybean cultivars.