Clemson University researchers have helped discover an “important milestone” in developing heat-tolerant soybeans. Their study, Comparative Lipidomic Analysis Reveals Heat Stress Responses of Two Soybean Genotypes Differing in Temperature Sensitivity, has been published in the Plants journal.

During the study, the researchers investigated whether lipid metabolic changes contribute to differences in heat stress responses in a heat-tolerant soybean variety and a heat-susceptible soybean variety.

“Our study found novel lipid metabolic traits associated with heat tolerance in soybean and the genes controlling those traits,” says Sruthi Narayanan, an assistant professor and researcher in the Clemson Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences. “These genes can lead to the identification of molecular markers that will be useful for selecting for heat-tolerant soybean genotypes. Identifying tightly linked molecular markers for stress tolerance is an important accomplishment in stress-tolerance research and a milestone in variety development projects.”