EVAluation of Soybean varieties for low Input and Organic productioN under stressed conditions (EVASION) 2021–2024

Weed competitiveness of soybean varieties is a desirable trait for organic, but also for non-organic production, as the use of herbicides is increasingly limited. Soybean cultivation will have to cope more often with drought in the future. The objective of the EVASION project (2021-2024) is to improve the assessment of varieties in order to identify the ones with the best behavior in stress conditions, following the effort of breeding companies to offer new lines with new characteristics. Variety evaluation usually consists in comparing candidate varieties performances to « standard » varieties, in multilocal trials. This is usually not enough to identify the varieties with the best potential in limiting conditions, like drought or strong weed infestation, as stress conditions may result in the abandon of the location, due to an extreme high variability among plots and locations. It is therefore important to define a new methodology to assess variety performance in a large range of growing conditions. The first step will consist in improving the knowledge of variety adaptation to drought and weed stress and their interactions. The best strategies (morphological and physiological) will be identified in field trials. The second step will be to test non destructive measurement tools and choose the most relevant for routine evaluation. The third step will be to implement these methods to routine evaluation, in organic and non-organic trials. At the end of the project we will have new evaluation strategies allowing to propose varieties with better performance in stress conditions, for both feed and food, and better description of each variety potential depending on the environmental conditions. Furthermore, farmers will learn about soybean cultivation and implications of drought, stress- and weed tolerant varieties thanks to strip trials and field visits and by other dissemination activities

Organic soybean production in Switzerland

Organic Soybean cultivation experiences an upscale at the moment in Switzerland. As in the rest of Europe, Switzerland is still heavily dependent on protein imports. After years of stakeholders efforts of the development of a value chain for organic soybeans for human nutrition, various attempts to develop the soybean cultivation for feed proved to be fruitful despite the fact that Swiss price level is beyond competition for world market prices. The organic farmers themselves decided to become, at least partially, more independent from overseas soybean imports by opting for organic soybeans of European origin since 2019. Furthermore, Bio Suisse decided that from 2022 on, all ruminants under Bio Suisse certification must be fed with feed of Swiss origin, concentrates are limited to 5% of the ration. Since many years numerous projects are carried out to increase the domestic protein production by developing suitable production systems for peas, faba beans, lupines and soybeans with stakholders along the value chain. Since more than 30 years, Swiss breeders successfully develop 00 to 000 soybean varieties with a focus on human nutrition, organic soybean cultivation and the respective value chains from breeding to endproduct is developing strongly. This article will shed light on particular aspects and drivers, specific measures, relevant projects and cultivation techniques of organic soybean production in Switzerland in the past years and will give an outlook on the future of organic soybeans

Identification of mega-environments in Europe and effect of allelic variation at maturity E loci on adaptation of European soybean

Soybean cultivation holds great potential for a sustainable agriculture in Europe, but adaptation remains a central issue. In this large mega-environment (MEV) study, 75 European cultivars from five early maturity groups (MGs 000-II) were evaluated for maturity-related traits at 22 locations in 10 countries across Europe. Clustering of the locations based on phenotypic similarity revealed six MEVs in latitudinal direction and suggested several more. Analysis of maturity identified several groups of cultivars with phenotypic similarity that are optimally adapted to the different growing regions in Europe. We identified several haplotypes for the allelic variants at the E1, E2, E3 and E4 genes, with each E haplotype comprising cultivars from different MGs. Cultivars with the same E haplotype can exhibit different flowering and maturity characteristics, suggesting that the genetic control of these traits is more complex and that adaptation involves additional genetic pathways, for example temperature requirement. Taken together, our study allowed the first unified assessment of soybean-growing regions in Europe and illustrates the strong effect of photoperiod on soybean adaptation and MEV classification, as well as the effects of the E maturity loci for soybean adaptation in Europe