Identification of geneticaly modified soybean seeds resistant to glyphosate

Abstract

Advances in genetic engineering permit the modification of plants to be tolerant to certain herbicides that are usually not selective. For practical and commercial purposes, it is important to be able to detect the presence or absence of these traits in genotypes. The objective of this research was to develop a procedure for identifying genetically modified soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) with resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. Two studies were conducted based on germination test. In the first study, soybean seeds were pre-imbibed in paper towel with the herbicide solutions, then transferred to moist paper towel for the germination test. In the second study, seeds were placed directly in herbicide solutions in plastic cups and tested for germination using the paper towel method. Eight soybean genotypes were compared: four Roundup Ready, that contained the gene resistant to the herbicide (G99-G725, Prichard RR, G99-G6682, and H7242 RR) and four non-transgenic parental cultivars (Boggs, Haskell, Benning, and Prichard). In the first study, the seeds were imbibed for 16 hours at 25°C in herbicide concentrations between 0.0 and 1.5% of the glyphosate active ingredient. In the second, seeds were subjected to concentrations between 0.0 and 0.48%, for one hour, at 30°C. The evaluation parameters were: germination, hypocotyl length, root length and total length of the seedlings. Both methods are efficient in identifying glyphosate-resistant soybean genotypes. It is possible to identify the genetically modified soybean genotypes after three days, by imbibing the seed in 0.12% herbicide solution, and after six days if the substrate is pre-imbibed in a 0.6% herbicide solution. The resistance trait was identified in all cultivars, independent of the initial physiological quality of the seed.