Landrace soy beans

[Kevin Collignon]

I am new here and this might not be as in depth of conversations that most look for on here, but I was wondering if any one had experience with landrace or breeding soy beans?

Soy is something that I would like to have as a staple in my garden but I have limited experience growing it.
This might be a stupid question but is Soy bean at risk with crossing with other standard bush beans?
I am have measly two varieties of soy beans that I am growing this year but I plan on adding to the mix as I can acquire more varieties.

If someone could share their experience with me or hopefully point me in the direction of somewhere I could get a soy bean mix to help jump start my selecting for a landrace that would be amazing.

[Jeremy Weiss]

No, soy won't cross with standard beans. Different species, different genera (Phaseolus versus Glycine)

Before I can really give good advice for making a landrace, it would help to know what your goal is for the resultant soy mix, in particular what you are going to do with the soy.
Animal feed? Tofu/Soymilk? Edamame? Soy sauce/bean sauce? Depending on what you plan to do with the beans, it changes what type of varieties you would want to acquire.

If the use you are planning isn't tofu/soymilk (or another where you need the final product to be snow white) somewhat surprisingly, I have found the best source of soy diversity has been some of the bulk soybeans sold in Asian Markets from China. In particular, I have found the smaller shinier black soybean types to have a surprisingly large number of varied phenotypes. No just variations in flower color and pod position, but even in things such as growth habit (i.e. you can find climbing soybeans in there). You'll also find a lot of green cotyledon ones, hence my "not good for tofu or milk" comment (unless you don't mind green milk).

Also remember that soybeans vary in day length sensitives so you'll need to match to your area.   

[Kevin Collignon]

Thank you for the response.

I would be using it for tofu, tempeh, miso, soy milk, basically anything you would use tofu for in cooking.
I don't think the color of the end product would much of issue as long is tastes like it supposed to since this is only for personal consumption.

I knew there was different colors but I wasn't aware of things like climbing ones.

I have tried to do some research about it but typically I end up with just sites talking about large conventional ag soy growing.
I hope as I get deeper into this world I'll be able to figure out how to find all the information like you provided for myself.

[Jeremy Weiss]

To be fair, it's not like it is a unattractive green (it ends up looking sort of like melted green tea ice cream)

The tricky part is telling which soy you are looking at. There are two kinds of black soybeans in commerce, the small shiny ones (which are pretty diverse) and the larger matte ones (which aren't as diverse). But unless you have both in front of you (or know what each looks like, like I do) telling one from the other is hard (brands change which one they use depending on season and availability, so that's a dead end.)

Oh, and you might bump into am ENORMOUS (like dime to quarter sized) kind of black soybean from Japan. Skip that one, they get that big by being poly embryonic, so they don't germinate very well.

I'd offer to send you some of my extra, but at the moment I don't have any (the critters were very aggressive last year and since I can't go to Chinatown until COVID is no longer a thing, I can't restock.) I think the only stuff I have at the moment is wild soy, and as that is inedible that would be of no use to you.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Soybean pods shatter. That doesn't work with my laid-back farming style. I would have to select for non-shattering as a primary selection criteria.

[Klaus Brugger]

I think it's also worth noting that cultivated soybeans (Glycine max) are rather strictly self-pollinating with very low outcrossing rates. A soybean landrace would therefore end up as basically being a mixture of inbred lines. So when starting a landrace, I would maybe include manually crossed seeds at first to really get the diversity going.

Wild soybeans (Glycine soja) may have a higher outcrossing rate – around 13%(Fujita et al. 1997*) – so as a long-term project one could include wild material for a "moderately promiscuous" () soybean landrace in the spirit of Joseph's promiscuous tomatoes.   

Source:
*R. Fujita, M. Ohara, K. Okazaki, Y. Shimamoto, The Extent of Natural Cross-Pollination in Wild Soybean (Glycine soja), Journal of Heredity, Volume 88, Issue 2, March/April 1997, Pages 124–128, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a023070

[Jeremy Weiss]

In a long term project, maybe, but as wild material would also bring back in tiny seed size, heavy shattering, and being mildly poisonous, it probably isn't a great idea for something you plan to eat right away.

[Kevin Collignon]

The ones I am growing this year are TANKURO EDAMAME which is claimed by baker creek seeds to be a very good for edamame and soy milk/tofu making I have that in the ground right now growing It appears I had a 100% germination rate. They other type I am getting is from the seed savers exchange as part of the effort to document their seeds they have no information on, all I know about it is that it is called "blackhawk". I also have some soy beans that we bought from a small local heath store which being out in the country is our only source of soy beans but i have yet to try growing them(it makes very beany unpalatable soy milk).

I would like to get some that are as promiscuous as possible. Do you think manually crossing the few I do have would be help until I get my hands on more varieties?

If anyone has a good source for crossed or wild soy bean types I would appreciate that information. Like I said before I seem to be terrible at finding worth while information on these things. Its possible that I just don't have the skill set for deep dives yet since I have never done research using the internet.

Being the small scale that I am and not working with acres just very intensely planted maybe 1/2 acre of garden space I think I can manage shattering pods and I have small children that I can task with digging around for loose beans that have broken out of their pods.

[Jeremy Weiss]

As I said, I have some wild soy (at least, I think it' wild soy). But it's very old, and I'd feel better giving it a year or two with me to regenerate.

My method of getting it (picking seeds out of bags of other beans) won't work for you, but I think the USDA might have some wild material.

I also know someone who does a lot of soy on another site. I'll check with him to see if he is willing to help you.

[Klaus Brugger]

Manually crossing cultivated material probably won't increase "promiscuity" but it will create genetic variation, of course. The flowers are small, but it can be done with tweezers and maybe magnifying glasses.
Like Jeremy Weiss, I wouldn't include wild material in a population you want you use right away. As for shattering, it's my impression that edamame varieties are much more prone to it than modern "dry soybean" varieties. Maybe that's also because you want the cooked edamame to pop open easily.

[Kevin Collignon]

I just stumbled upon https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/ and was able to request some of the two wild types they had and i believe one is a cross with a wild. I am not sure how the process works but I submitted a order with them. I guess I will wait and see if they will actually send me anything.

For now know how much seed I would need to produce for eating it regularly I am going to just focus on breeding and building up a seed store before we eat much of it. In theory I could have two crops of soy a year since I most years have a 300 day growing season so I hope I can mix the genetics enough with in a few years to have a reliable landrace.

I think the wild introduction would work best for me since I don't have the patients to use tweezers and a magnifying glass to cross them. I was more thinking paint brush method of pollinating things but I guess that shows my lack of experience with soy bean growing.

[Andrew Barney]

Not sure if gmo is of concern, but I've read lots if not most of the white types are gmo now, but none of the black varieties.

Peace seeds & Peace Seedlings have a black soybean that I imagine is probably very good. I have a packet of it I think called Hokkaido (never planted).

I've found just planting lots of diverse peas increases the native bee population which I suspect has increases the amount of solitary bee natural outcrossing in peas. Maybe the same could happen with soy beans.

Soybeans  - Glycine max 

Varieties range in maturing times from July to Oct.

Aoyu Mid-season productive edamame.                                             25/ 3.00

Black Hokkaido                                                                    25/ 3.00

Productive, mid-early season, makes lavender tofu, beautiful.

Hidatsa  early edamame, light green seeds.                                        25/ 3.00

Hakucho                                                                                            25/ 3.00

Productive, large mid-season edamame, 2 foot tall.     

Soyamasume productive, mid-season edamame.                     25/ 3.00

Cha Kura Kake                                                                                  25/ 3.00

2 foot, bi-color seeds, midseason, 46% protein. 

Tohya Mid-season edamame, light green seeds.                      25/ 3.00

Vinton 81 Late, yellow seeds, high oil.                                               25/ 3.00

http://peaceseedlingsseeds.blogspot.com

[Kevin Collignon]

I would rather avoid GMOs in my population all I have so far is black seed to I guess I will just stick to that mostly.

I appreciate the new source for seeds. I just not have to convince my wife to let me spend more money on seeds (I am thinking that might not happen this season).

I will keep scraping together new varieties and I'll update this post once I make some kind of progress.

Thank you to everybody for their input so far.

[Andrew Barney]

https://youtu.be/w5gfI-sSFaM?t=1334

22:14 @ Accessing Agrobiodiversity Part 3: Nathan Kleinman, Experimental Farm Network

I have a moderate (perhaps increasing?) allergy to soy. It stinks because I love teriyaki sauce and sometimes eat tofu. I am now looking into making my own soy-free soy sauce using peas. There is already a guy in the UK making tofu from peas and I think started a company selling it.

But if you a set to breeding with soy, please consider only using those with low protein for the one that causes allergies. Thank you.

human allergen P34 (P34)
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/descriptordetail?id=51117

low or null for P34:
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/descriptoraccession?id1=51117&id2=18249&type=1

Glycine max (L.) Merr. Top Name: Yu ci huang
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1462447

Glycine max (L.) Merr. Top Name: Huang dou <1>
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1595868

[Kevin Collignon]

https://youtu.be/w5gfI-sSFaM?t=1334

22:14 @ Accessing Agrobiodiversity Part 3: Nathan Kleinman, Experimental Farm Network

I have a moderate (perhaps increasing?) allergy to soy. It stinks because I love teriyaki sauce and sometimes eat tofu. I am now looking into making my own soy-free soy sauce using peas. There is already a guy in the UK making tofu from peas and I think started a company selling it.

But if you a set to breeding with soy, please consider only using those with low protein for the one that causes allergies. Thank you.

human allergen P34 (P34)
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/descriptordetail?id=51117

low or null for P34:
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/descriptoraccession?id1=51117&id2=18249&type=1

Glycine max (L.) Merr. Top Name: Yu ci huang
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1462447

Glycine max (L.) Merr. Top Name: Huang dou <1>
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1595868

Thank you for passing on this information. I hadn't come across this before so these are good things to keep in mind going forward. I have seen people also use Chickpeas for for tofu and miso so I assume you may be able to make soy sauce since they are all similar processes.