BASF applies technology to all phases of variety development

SEYMOUR, Ill. — BASF is focused on soybeans with a regional breeding model.

“We’re one of six primary companies that has a soybean breeding program in the U.S.,” said Tim Pruski, BASF lead soybean breeder.

“We have a unique approach to soybean breeding. We have a regional model versus a broad model, which we believe will help us capture unique and diverse sources of germplasm to help us manage our diversity,” said Pruski during the BASF Showcase Plot tour.

“Our plant breeders are based at our local sites and we’re trying to combine the science with the art of plant breeding.”

BASF has five soybean breeding hubs in key soybean producing areas, including the site near Champaign.

“We also have about 10 offsite locations and each program evaluates about 40,000 plots per year,” Pruski said.

“We spent roughly a decade developing a strong conventional germplasm base and that really paid off when we were enabled to start crossing with E3 materials,” he said.

For the longer-term pipeline, BASF will combine the E3 trait with the nematode resistant trait.

“It will be the first commercially available biotech trait on the market to control soybean cyst nematodes,” Pruski said. “Data has indicated an 8% yield benefit over today’s resistant varieties.”

Last year, BASF evaluated 30,000 NRS E3 lines and over 4,000 were put into yield trials.

“This is our first year of yield trial testing and out of this will come our first products on the market at the end of the decade, pending regulatory approval,” the soybean breeder said.

The phenotype of a soybean plant, Pruski said, equals the interaction of the genetics with the environmental conditions.

“We are striving to apply technology to all phases of this equation to help us make better decisions and get products to market faster,” he said. “We’re capturing weather and soil data to help us figure out how to manage genotype by environment interaction.”

Management is also important to match with genetics and the environment.

“Management is the things we have impact on such as variety placement, tillage type and planting date,” said Greg Ury, BASF agronomist.

“Water stress from too much water is huge,” he said. “We have a site where we can flood the varieties to see how they handle saturated soils.”

BASF is doing testing in a different way than in the past.

“We have full-farm trials to evaluate varieties to see how they handle a drier acre or a wetter acre,” Ury said. “We’re discovering we have new varieties that tend to be pretty good across the field.”

The agronomists have found that soybean varieties build yield in different places.

“We have varieties that put a lot of yield on branches and other varieties are pretty heavy main stem,” Ury said.

“I want the varieties with yield on branching in places where there is a better chance of holding water on high organic matter acres,” he said. “If you have water limiting, the first place you’ll lose yield is off the branch yield.”

The strength of varieties that have yield on the main stem is stability across variable acres.

“They have a lot less peaks and valleys of yield across the field,” Ury said. “But on really productive ground, these varieties might not be able to keep up with other varieties.”

The agronomist talked about population trials that including planting soybeans at the rates of 100,000, 140,000 or 180,000 seeds per acre.

“For varieties that build yield on branches, the 100,000 seeding rate had the highest yield,” Ury said.

“As we increased 10,000 seeds per acre, we were losing almost nine-tenths of a bushel, so we were losing a lot of yield by going too heavy,” he said.

“On stress acres, the 180,000 seeding rate was better than anything else,” the agronomist said. “The beans that are more main stem have a lot less of unstable branch yield and a lot more stable main stem yield.”