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Abstract
Pest vulnerability of value added characteristics in Benning soybean [Glycine max (L.)] was evaluated through field studies and greenhouse and growth chamber insect bioassays as part of a reduced risk assessment of these lines. Benning is a soybean cultivar that was developed by the Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station and it is noted for its strong agronomic properties. This elite cultivar served as the genetic background for the value added traits (VAT) that were introgressed and evaluated for their pest susceptibility attributes. The traits evaluated included lines with improved nutritional characteristics such as low palmitic acid and low linolenic acid. These VAT are becoming increasingly important as consumers demand improved soybean for food use. Benning M and Benning MGH, near isogenic lines which contain soybean insect resistance quantitative trait locus (SIR QTL), served as resistant checks in this study and were evaluated here under natural pest populations for their effectiveness. We were interested in seeing how these VAT lines would perform in terms of vulnerability when confronted with a host of common soybean insect pests. In a separate study, simple sequence repeat (SSR) DNA markers, together with field experiments, and insect bioassays were utilized in an effort to confirm the existence of previously reported SIR QTLs. SIR QTLs had previously been reported on linkage group (LG) B2 and LG E of the soybean genome. At least 27 SSR markers closely associated with loci along LG B2 were genotyped to see what portion of the resistance alleles from the donor parent (PI 227687) had been successfully introgressed into the progeny. To confirm the SIR QTL on LG E, antixenosis (non preference) and antibiosis (toxicological effects) assays were employed to elucidate the effects of sharp vs blunt pubescence tip in a near-isogenic line population differing in pubescence morphology.