ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional and Applied Plant Genomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1606321
This article is part of the Research TopicMutagenesis-Based Development of Novel Germplasm Resource for Crops and Horticultural PlantsView all 3 articles
Improving Soybean Seed Sucrose Content using TILLING by Sequencing Analyses of The Soybean Sucrose Synthase Gene Family
Provisionally accepted
Dounya Knizia1
Erdem Anil1Yasser Salhi1Haiying Shi2Abdelhalim El Baze1
My Abdelmajid Kassem3Naoufal Lakhssassi4
Henry T Nguyen2
Khalid Meksem1*- 1School of Agricultural Sciences, College of Agricultural, Physical and Life Sciences; Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Colorado, United States
- 2Division of Plant Science and Technology, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States
- 3Department of Biological and Forensic Sciences, College of Health, Science, and Technology, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, North Carolina, United States
- 4Department of Biological Science, School of Science, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia, United States
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Soybean seed quality is influenced by its soluble sugar composition, with high sucrose content being desirable for nutritional and industrial applications. In contrast, excessive raffinose and stachyose levels are considered undesirable due to their adverse effects on gastrointestinal function in humans and monogastric animals. Therefore, developing soybean mutant lines with elevated sucrose content and optimal raffinose and stachyose content is desirable. In this study, we characterized twelve sucrose synthase genes through a comprehensive phylogenetic tree analysis, synteny analysis, gene structure evaluation, and variations in conserved domains. Additionally, we conducted a TILLING by Sequencing approach to identify EMS mutations in the characterized sucrose synthase. Numerous mutations have been identified in soybean sucrose synthase that resulted in high sucrose content, including the sucrose synthase mutants SL446 (R582W) and F1115 (G249E) on Glyma.02G240400 with a sucrose content of 9.5% and 9.1%, respectively. The obtained soybean mutants with enhanced sugar content can be useful in breeding programs to improve soybean nutritional quality without potential developmental trade-offs.
Keywords: Soybean, Glycine max, sucrose synthase gene family, Sucrose, Raffinose, Stachyose, EMS mutagenesis, tilling
Received: 05 Apr 2025; Accepted: 27 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Knizia, Anil, Salhi, Shi, El Baze, Kassem, Lakhssassi, Nguyen and Meksem. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Khalid Meksem, School of Agricultural Sciences, College of Agricultural, Physical and Life Sciences; Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Colorado, United States
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