By K.C. Jaehnig

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Fifteen scientists from five states are pooling their high-tech knowledge and skills to battle a fungal disease that each year blights or kills roughly 2 percent of the nation’s soybean crop.

The joint effort, headed by David A. Lightfoot of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, aims to control soybean Sudden Death Syndrome through biotechnology and involves researchers from SIUC, The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland, Iowa State University, Purdue University, the University of Georgia and the University of Illinois. A $450,000 grant from the United Soybean Board will underwrite the first year of what the team expects to be a three-year project that will lead to significant federal funding for SDS research.

The national soybean group agreed to fund the work because SDS has become a national problem, Lightfoot said. It is enlarging its range, and each year it takes a greater toll on the growers’ bottom lines.

“Traditional breeding methods just don’t seem to be getting anywhere in controlling it,” Lightfoot said. “We’ve had people breeding for resistance for 10 years, but somewhere around 90 percent of varieties are still susceptible.

“Agronomic controls aren’t the answer, either. If you plant later, that affects yield. You could deep till, but that’s costly in diesel fuel, and it doesn’t work on all soil types. You could spray with nasty chemicals, but the ones that are cheap enough don’t really work. That’s why we think biotechnology will be key to limiting future damage.”

The research group will take a two-pronged approach. Some teams will concentrate on the soybean itself, others will focus on the fungus. The latter will be breaking new ground, Lightfoot said.

“There’s been slow but steady progress on the plant side over the last eight or 10 years, but we’re still broadly and deeply ignorant about the fungus,” he said. “We don’t know how it infects so many different types of plants but kills only soybeans, we don’t know how it reproduces — at this point, we can’t even tell the girls from the boys!”

Over the next three years, some researchers will be looking for the soybean’s “Achilles heel” — a soybean protein they believe the fungus targets. If they can find it, they’ll look for ways to protect it.

Others will try to figure out what resistant plants do differently from those that are susceptible so they can help the susceptible ones do better.

One group will search for soybean genes that seem similar to fungus-resistant genes in other species, test those bean genes against SDS and if they work, try to boost their effectiveness.

Some will use technology patented by SIUC to equip the germplasm of high-yielding varieties with a whole stack of resistance genes, rather than just a few.

Researchers also will take a closer look at germplasm from SDS-resistant Chinese soybeans to see if that resistance comes from stronger versions of the genes in U.S. varieties or whether it comes from altogether new ones.

At the same time, other researchers will be trying to answer questions about the fungus. Might there be a “critter” that could eat it? Why is one strain more aggressive than another? How many toxins does the fungus manufacture and what exactly do they do? Could you knock out a gene and render the fungus harmless?

“Just about everything we do in this area will be directed toward understanding enough about the fungus to develop a workable greenhouse assay (a means of detecting SDS in plants grown in greenhouses) — there is no such assay now,” Lightfoot said.

“With a simple assay that works, breeders could then develop resistant varieties more quickly and with less expense. It’s a breakthrough waiting to happen.”

Lightfoot believes that within three years, the team will accomplish 90 percent of its objectives, with 20 percent of those achievements coming in the first year.

“Every one of the investigators working on this project has been very active in SDS or related research over the last several years — there is no dead wood here("the investigators are all high-energy jumping beans".),” he said with a smile.

In addition to Lightfoot, project members are: Madan K. Bhattacharyya (Iowa), Steven J. Clough (Illinois), Sarah F. Covert (Illinois), Brian Diers (Illinois), Glen Hartman (Illinois), Javed Iqbal (SIUC), Shuxian Li (Illinois), Vera Lozovaya (Illinois), Khalid Meksem (SIUC), Victor Njiti (SIUC), Christopher Town (TIGR), Andreas Westphal (Purdue), Jack M. Widholm (Illinois) and X.B. Yang (Iowa).

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