Chinese agricultural scientists using gene-editing technology have created new soybean mutants, which could lead to soybean crops in much warmer climates including South China and countries near the Equator.
To create the soybean mutants, research teams from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences knocked out two genes using the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR, Hou Wensheng, a research fellow at the Institute of Crop Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the Global Times ….
…
Soybean crops planted in warmer climates have low yields due to shorter time periods needed to mature, seriously affecting the flowering and maturity of soybeans.
…
Experiments showed that the mutants flowered 31 days later and produced significantly more pods and seeds per plant than that were planted in the south.
Read full, original article: Gene edit expands soybean planting in China