Soybean Product Development

The mission of the Pioneer Soybean Research program is to develop superior soybean varieties that provide increased value, efficiency and profitability for farmers and customers.

The goals of the Pioneer Soybean Research team are to:

Improve harvestable yield.
Reduce crop losses, grower input costs and risk through incorporation of disease and herbicide resistance into soybeans.
Create more value and new uses for soybean crops by improving the quality of the grain produced.
Utilize technologies to enhance breeding system efficiency.

Increasing soybean yield and yield stability for Pioneer customers is the No. 1 mission of Pioneer soybean researchers. Other key attributes researchers focus on are maturity, standability, disease and pest resistance, stress tolerance, herbicide resistance, oil and meal quality and emergence.

To achieve these attributes, researchers work to:

Maximize the number of experimental varieties evaluated each year. Pioneer tests more than one million unique, experimental lines each year.
Incorporate disease and pest resistance into high-yielding varieties to protect yield.
Use tropical and Southern Hemisphere nurseries to rapidly respond to customer needs and to speed overall product development cycles.
Vigorously protect intellectual property using all available means including patents, the Plant Variety Protection Act and molecular technologies.

Use new technologies, such as gene transfer technology, molecular markers and automation to introduce new and improved traits, and to bring products to market more quickly.

Highlights of Pioneer Soybean Research:

Wide-Area Testing - Each year, Pioneer soybean researchers plant more than one million yield test plots to measure performance of experimental lines in many different environments. Thousands of new crosses are made each year to assure a steady flow of new elite varieties with packages of traits that fit customers' needs.

Resistance Herbicide - Pioneer soybean researchers are developing soybean varieties with resistance to herbicides that give customers additional options for weed control throughout the growing season. Soybeans resistant to sulfonylurea herbicides and glyphosate (Roundup®) are currently available to customers. Varieties with the Optimum™ GAT™ trait, providing combined resistance to glyphosate and sulfonylurea herbicides, are in development.

Insect and Disease Resistance - Laboratory and field researchers work together to improve resistance to pressures such as soybean cyst nematode, brown stem rot, Phytophthora root rot, white mold, Sclerotinia, sudden death syndrome and Asian soybean rust. Pioneer has been awarded patents for molecular markers associated with soybean cyst nematode and brown stem rot resistant genes in soybeans. Pioneer researchers are also extending molecular marker research to track genes associated with yield improvement.

Value-Added Soybeans - Pioneer researchers are developing soybean seed suitable for the value-added and identity-preserved markets.The Soybean Research team's efforts resulted in commercialization of the first low-linolenic acid soybean variety in 1994. This variety produces an oil functionally superior for frying stability and shelf-life. Pioneer also was first to offer a soybean variety with low saturated fat content. Work continues on soybean oil, protein and carbohydrate profile modification. Pioneer researchers expect to bring the next key oil trait, high oleic, to market by 2010.

Soybean Research Locations by Region
North America	15
South America	4
Total	19

Last Modified:May 30, 2007

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