Current Research Projects

The following research projects have been approved for FY08-09.

Five research projects received funding totaling $72,449 from the Pennsylvania Soybean Board for the fiscal year 2008-2009.

The eight-member board administers the federally-legislated soybean checkoff program in the commonwealth. Its fiscal year extends from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

The newly funded projects cover a broad scope of interest, from variety trials to development of a soluble soy protein to biodeisel testing at Penn State.

Here’s a summary rundown.

• $7,000 to Dr. Greg Roth and Penn State colleagues to continue to evaluate the production of both commercial and private soybean cultivars under Pennsylvania conditions and to make their findings known to Pennsylvania producers.

The variety trails, now in their 16th year, are conducted at Penn State research facilities at Rock Springs and Landisville and last year, for the first time, included Monsantos’ new low-linolenic Vistive beans which command a premium in the marketplace. In 2007, the Vistive plots averaged 61.4 bushels an acre.

• $8,266 to Dr. Dave Johnson of Penn State who will driect a study entitled “Evaluation of Seeding Rate and Seed Treatments on Soybean Stand Establishment and Yield.” One focus of the study will be to attempt to determine whether seed treatments are worth the money, according to Ron Hoover, on farm research director at Penn State.

Hoover, reporting to the Soybean Board on Johnson’s behalf, said that the seed treatment Cruiser Maxx , for example. costs about $12. In 2007, the treatment appeared to increase the number of plants emerging in the field by about 10 percent but had no apparent effect on yield.

He added, however, that maximum yield occurred at about 125,000 seeds per acre. “That could save some money if you’re planting at 160,000 to 200,000 seeds per acre,’ he said.

In 2008, he said, the researchers would look more closely at seeding rates – “we will rethink them,” is the way he put it — and also look at early planting.

• $9,683 to Dr. John Coupland of the Penn State Department of Food Science to continue his search for a soluable soy protein and thus “a new way to use soy protein in foods.” Soy protein,

Coupland told the board, is ‘very insoluable …. like little soccer balls floating around in water,” and he has been trying for a decade to make something happen. “I hate to stand here and tell you it didn’t work,” he said, adding quickly that he had another idea. It will involve reacting commercial soyprotein isolate with pectin at a variety of pH values … in other words, different chemistry.

“Success,: Coupland said, “would provide a new way to use soy in pectin rich food – such as fruit juices — or to generate soy-pectin complexes that could be added to a soluable ingredient in other foods.

• $10,000 to Dr. Roger Koide of the Department of Horticulture at Penn State who would like to demonstrate, in this age of concern about ‘global warming,’ that soybeans have an ability to sequester carbon in the soil which canola does not. This project, he said, would “compare, with respect to petroleum diesel, the reduction in CO2 emissions from the production and use of biodiesel derived from canola and soybeans.”

Koide explained: “Canola has vast potential in many parts of the U.S. because of its much greater per acre oil yield compared to soybean. However, because soybean forms a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi that live at the interface between the root and the soil, we hypothesize that it will sequester significantly more soil carbon than canola which is not mycorrhizal. Therefore, we hypothesize that soybean will result in significantly lower net CO2 emissions than canola when used to produce biodisesel.”

• $37,500 to Glen Cauffman and Joseph Perez at Penn State who, in conjunction with similar studies funded by both the United Soybean Board and the National Biodiesel Board, are attempting to develop a simple, inexpensive rapid and yet accurate test to evaluate biodiesel fuel quality.

Perez is a member of the Chemical Engineering Department of the Penn State College of Engineering. Cauffman is manager of farms and facilities for the Penn State College of Agriculture. The two men are largely responsible for the conversion of virtually the entire Penn State campus diesel fleet to soy-based biodeisel.