Figure 3.

Breeding salt-tolerant soybeans. (a) Abundant variations in salt tolerance exist in soybean accessions. Numbers from 1 (the most tolerant) to 5 (the most sensitive) indicate salt tolerance level. (b) Characterizing soybean accessions with high-throughput phenotyping methods under conditions that mimic realistic saline field conditions and cost-effective genotyping approaches. (c) Identifying target genes and functional variants for salt-tolerance-related traits. (d) Integration of single-nucleotide variations and ‘omics’ at gene level. (e) With knowledge of key gene variations and related pathways, MAS and other biological approaches will become the most effective way for breeding.