Going north: adaptation of soybean to long-day environments

This article comments on: Zhu X, Leiser WL, Hahn V, Wurschum T. 2023. The genetic architecture of soybean photothermal adaptation to high latitudes. Journal of Experimental Botany 74,2987-3002 In plant breeding, understanding genetic variation in the photoperiodic control of flowering time of crop plants such as soybean is a prerequisite for managing adaptation to new environments. analyzed a large diversity panel of >1500 early maturity soybean lines to disclose the genetic architecture behind the timing of flowering and maturity. Their findings confirm known maturity loci and reveal new candidate genes and alleles as well as environmental interactions of individual quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for flowering and maturity time. The results shed light on the complexity of the regulatory network which controls the timing of flowering in soybean. This supports the fine-tuning of plant architectures through the combination of stem termination and flowering genes towards a better adaptation of soybean to high latitudes or other stressful environments.