Building a Better Bean： Prospects for the Next Generation of Transgenic Soybeans

The first transgenic soybeans, with the glyphosate-tolerant trait, were introduced just over a decade ago in 1996. The rapid rate of adoption and global cultivation of transgenic soybeans since then is an unqualified success story. Biotech soybeans are being grown on nearly 60 million hectares in 9 countries and double-digit growth is expected for the near future （James, 2006）. However, while biotechnology-derived soybeans were revolutionizing agriculture, the technology to produce them has advanced only slightly since the first transgenic plants were produced in the late 1980＇s. Soybeans remain a difficult crop to transform and there are only a small number of successful procedures that are routinely applied.