[Title Slide – Using Molecular Markers in Soybean Breeding; With Dr. Pengyin Chen Professor of Soybean Breeding and Genetics; Number 19, October 26, 2009 Your Soybean Podcast, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board]

[Pengyin Chen standing in a laboratory] Plant breeding is a numbers game and also, time is a very important factor in the course of developing variety.

[Dr. Chen shows a bag of seeds] For instance, start from crossing to release a variety takes about 8 to 10 years typically. However, with technology we have today, [Diagram showing molecular markers broken down from DNA strand] molecular markers, you will be able to see in a few minutes, that we can identify genes using molecular markers and [Slide - Soybean Varieties from the Lab – picture showing a notebook with pictures of different varieties, and Petri dishes.] then that process will speed up the breeding program in quite a few years.

[Dr. Chen] So we can probably identify traits much quicker and more accurately in a breeding population and it will speed our selection so we can release a variety sooner, in 4 or 5 years. So today I want to touch a little bit the technology we use in our breeding program. That is called molecular marker assisted selection.

Basically we can go collect leaf samples from a plant and then we bring the tissue back here to the grinding, [Slide – P.C.R. (Polymerase Chain Reaction) for DNA Replication. Picture of a thermo cycler.] then we run a P.C.R., which generates a lot of DNA copies. And then we run a geosystem [Slide – Geosystem for DNA Band Separation. Picture of equipment used for DNA band separation.] ; will separate out the bands from those banding patterns we are able to tell which genes are present, which genes are absent in a particular plant. [Video showing Geosystem lab testing] And then using that molecular marking information we will go out and select our plants that carries the gene for a specific trait.

[Dr. Chen standing in a laboratory] So that process will speed up the accuracy and improve the accuracy of the selection and also speed up the process of the selection. So and that is one thing we do up here in our breeding program using molecular marker technology.