Economic Importance and Evolution of Breeding

Originating in northeast China, soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) in the last decades has become the main oilseed in the world due mainly to being a great source of vegetable oil and protein. This crop currently occupies an area more than 118 million hectares worldwide. Due to the projections for the increase of the world population and the high purchasing power of this, the demand for the soybean grain will not decrease in the next years. In Brazil, soybean found adequate conditions for its development in the South. From this region, since the 1970s, soybean has been expanding in the Brazilian savannah, called Cerrado, a process known as the “tropicalization of soybean”. The genetic breeding of the species was one of the main factors responsible for the success of its expansion in Brazil. The evolution of soybean genetic breeding in Brazil can be divided into two phases. The first extends the introduction of the crop until the mid-1980s, marked by the participation of the public sector in the development of varieties, seed supply and technology transfer. This period was mainly marked by the adaptation of the soybean to the conditions of the Cerrado and regions of low latitudes. In the 1990s, a new phase for the soybean breeding in Brazil was started, which was marked by the participation of large groups of international capital. This period has been seeking, in addition to the development of adapted and productive varieties, new materials of greater market value from the development of transgenic events.