title: Isoflavone Content of Soybean Cultivars from Maturity Group 0 to VI Grown in Northern and Southern China.
abstract: Soybean isoflavone content has long been considered to be a desirable trait to target in selection programs for their contribution to human health and plant defense systems. The objective of this study was to determine isoflavone concentrations of various soybean cultivars from maturity groups 0 to VI grown in various environments and to analyze their relationship to other important seed characters. Forty soybean cultivars were grown in replicated trials at Wuhan and Beijing of China in 2009/2010 and their individual and total isoflavone concentrations were determined by HPLC. Their yield and quality traits were also concurrently analyzed. The isoflavone components had abundant genetic variation in soybean seed, with a range of coefficient variation from 45.01% to 69.61%. Moreover, individual and total isoflavone concentrations were significantly affected by cultivar, maturity group, site and year. Total isoflavone concentration ranged from 551.15 to 7584.07 μg g-1, and averaged 2972.64 μg g-1across environments and cultivars. There was a similar trend regarding the isoflavone contents, in which a lower isoflavone concentration was generally presented in early rather than late maturing soybean cultivars. In spite of significant cultivar × year × site interactions, cultivars with consistently high or low isoflavone concentrations across environments were identified, indicating that a genetic factor plays the most important role for isoflavone accumulation. The total isoflavone concentration had significant positive correlations with plant height, effective branches, pods per plant, seeds per plant, linoleic acid and linolenic acid, while significant negative correlations with oleic acid and oil content, indicating that isoflavone concentration can be predicted as being associated with other desirable seed characteristics.
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jingying
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yinan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fenxia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shurong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Junming
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: MOA Key Laboratory of Soybean Biology (Beijing), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lianzheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
keywords: Fatty acid; Isoflavone; Maturity group; Protein; Soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill); Yield