Illinois-led project to sequence soybean genomes, improve future … – Herald-Whig

Soybean already is a source of protein and biodiesel, but a new project wants to ensure the crop lives up to its full potential.

An ambitious effort led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will sequence 400 soybean genomes to develop a pangemone an attempt to characterize all the useful diversity in the genome to create an even more robust and resilient crop.

There have been soybean pangenome efforts before, but this will be a big step forward. We want to identify all of the variation present within this diverse set of cultivated soybeans. Knowing details of all of the genetic variation should very much enhance and speed up the ability of crop breeders and biotechnology experts to identify important genes and incorporate them into better crops, said project leader Matt Hudson, professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U of I.

As soybean is becoming increasingly important as a worldwide crop, as well as being a key bioenergy crop, this project will have global impact and be particularly relevant to U.S. agriculture.

Hudson and his multi-institution collaborators will select and grow soybean lines, shipping extracted DNA to the JGI for long-read sequencing.

With its inclusion of wild relatives and the sheer number of reference and high-quality draft genomes set for sequencing, the project will drastically improve the current soybean reference genome. Hudson explains that genetic diversity is the raw material for crop improvement, but the crops diversity is not reflected in the reference genome. He likens it to the first human genome, which was pieced together only from Caucasian individuals.

Theres an increasing effort to have the reference human genome reflect all of the variation in people. We think there are equally big reasons to do the same thing in crops, Hudson said. But its hard to locate the missing diversity by any other means than sequencing more genomes.

The U.S. Department of Agricultures September Hogs and Pigs report places the Sept. 1 inventory of all hogs and pigs at 74.3 million head, up 2.2% from last quarter and 0.26% from last year a slight surprise given pre-report estimates.

Much of the surprise reflects market hogs, which the USDA pegs at 0.4% higher compared to trade expectations than ranged from unchanged to nearly 1.9% lower, yet all estimates agree on a roughly 1% smaller breeding herd, said Jason Franken, agricultural economist at Western Illinois University and contributor to the farmdoc team.

All weight classes of market hogs inventories come in a bit above average pre-report expectations, with the lighter classes accounting for most of the unanticipated market hogs, Franken said.

The modest increase in lighter-weight-class hogs partly reflects that the June to August pig crop is also just less than 0.5% larger than last year, compared to expectations ranging from 0.8% to 2.1% lower. About 3.7% fewer sows farrowed is more than offset by a record 11.61 pigs saved per litter, or 4.3% more than were saved in the same period last year, he said.

Cold stocks of pork have rebounded and even resumed seasonal patterns, but still have not returned to average pre-COVID-pandemic levels.

The U.S. exported 506 million pounds of pork in July, or about 4% more than in July 2022. Much of the growth reflects greater exports to Canada and Mexico, while declines occurred in major Asian markets like South Korea, China and Hong Kong.

Taking all of this into account, prices over the next four quarters seem unlikely to exceed current costs of production around $99 per hundredweight, Franken said.

In general hog prices tend to be higher in the second and third quarters, with lower prices in the first and fourth quarters. Consistent with that pattern, prices are forecast to drop to an average of $81 per hundredweight for the fourth quarter of 2023. For 2024, prices are forecast to average $80.60 in the first quarter and then rise seasonally to $90.20 and $94.09 in the second and third quarters.

However, if current gains in pigs per litter do not persist to offset intended cuts to farrowings, then higher prices may be realized, Franken said.

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Illinois-led project to sequence soybean genomes, improve future ... - Herald-Whig