Soybean - Bioenergy Crop Plants - page 518

developed and used to generate hypotheses toward this goal. The enhanced shelf life of soybean oil
with high oxidative stability should be the major goals to be addressed in the future.
Another bottleneck is with the difficulty in the application of translational genomics technolo-
gies because of the limited genomics information of potential “high oil content and/or modified oil
composition organisms” including other eukaryotic and prokaryotic species. Advances in metabolic
flux analysis will help to engineer carbon shuttling between source and sink, and more intense
investigations are needed in these aspects. In other words, changes in transcript, protein, and metab-
olite signatures during plant development, reserve mobilization and deposition, and the influence
of environmental stresses are not well known, and the efforts toward these objectives will increase
the possibility of redesigning soybean for food, feed, and fuel needs. Another viable option is to
consider vegetative tissues along with seeds for metabolic engineering toward increased availability
of soybean oil feedstock. A comprehensive strategy for increased oil production combined with
enhanced soybean yield and stress tolerance will generate cost-effective biofuel feedstock and help
in the commercialization of improved soybean varieties.
acknoW ledGment
We thank Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council for the funding support toward the improvement
of oil content and composition in soybean.
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