Those who know it treasure it, while those who disregard it treat it like a worn-out shoe: Let’s learn about the story of soybeans

In the "National Key Protected Wild Plant List" promulgated a few months ago, some common "weeds" are listed, such as wild rice, wild soybeans, etc., which is somewhat puzzling.

Generally speaking, this list is intended to protect endangered plants, but these so-called "weeds" are not so endangered that there seems to be no need to pass legislation to protect them.

Wild soybean flowers | Dalgial/Wikimedia Commons

But in fact, these "weeds" are relatives of some important food crops and have important genetic value. Protecting them is protecting the germplasm resources of food crops, such as today's protagonist - soybean.

Planted for thousands of years, it is now on the table

It is impossible that you have not eaten the plant soybean: from soybeans and edamame that can be used directly as food ingredients, to soy milk, tofu, and soybean oil obtained through simple processing, and even fermented soy products such as black beans, fermented bean curd, and soy sauce...Soybeans have long been integrated into our food culture.

The ancestor of soybeans is a twining herb with small fruits. After thousands of years of domestication, soybeans now grow almost upright and their fruits have become much larger. There are many varieties of soybeans, which are given different names due to the different colors of their seed coats, such as yellow beans, black beans, black beans, green beans, etc.

Unripe soybeans are edamame | Uo3rt / Wikimedia Commons

Today, soybean is one of the most important food and oil crops in the world, and it is an indisputable fact that it originates from my country. Whether it is the "bean" and "shu" recorded in ancient poems and books, or the carbonized soybeans preserved in ancient tombs, they all prove that my country has a long history of planting and eating soybeans, which is not available in other parts of the world. Our ancestors began to widely cultivate soybeans more than 4,700 years ago, and some scholars even believe that the history of wild soybean domestication can be traced back to more than 8,000 years ago.

Carbonized soybeans from the Longshan era unearthed from the Zhouyuan site are about 4,000 years old | China Archaeology Network

Crossing the oceans and becoming famous all over the world

Soybeans were originally unique to my country. Later, as my country opened up frequent trade and cultural exchanges with neighboring countries, soybeans were introduced to various countries. Around 200 BC, soybeans were introduced from Northeast China to Korea, and then introduced to Japan through Korea.

In the early Nara period (710-794 AD), the processing method of soybeans from China was introduced to Japan, and soybeans have been widely cultivated and used in Japan since then. After that, soybeans were gradually spread to other parts of Asia through a combination of sea and land routes.

Traditional Japanese natto recipe, where steamed soybeans are wrapped in straw and fermented | Bakkai / Wikimedia Commons

In the 18th century, soybeans from my country began to spread to Western countries. In 1765, soybeans were brought to the United States by Samuel Bowen, a seaman of the East India Company, and then to France and Germany in the following 20 years. In 1790, the Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK first tried to grow soybeans. It was not until 1901 that soybeans appeared in northern Russia. The pronunciation of the word soybean in modern Latin, English, German, French, Russian, etc. is almost always a homophone of "shu" (shū).

The key year for Chinese soybeans to become famous was 1873. At that time, my country's soybeans made their debut at the World Expo held in Vienna, the capital of Austria, and immediately attracted widespread attention from the world. Soybeans have since been hailed as "the treasure of the East" and "the pearl of China", setting off a wave of soybean planting around the world.

Soybeans spread from China to all parts of the world | References [1]

The coveted treasure trove

However, the fame of soybeans has attracted the covetousness of many countries, including the United States. In 1898, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent people to China to investigate and collect soybeans, and began to introduce and cultivate them. Since the 1970s, the United States has replaced China as the world's largest soybean producer and exporter, while China's international status in soybeans has continued to decline.

Looking around the world today, my country is the world's largest soybean consumer, but its total output ranks fourth, having been left behind by Brazil, the United States and Argentina for many years.

Mechanized soybean harvesting | United Soybean Board / Flickr

In the mid-1950s, soybean cyst nematode disease broke out in 14 states in the United States, bringing soybean production to the brink of destruction. The U.S. Department of Agriculture found disease-resistant genes in "Beijing black beans" collected from China and transferred them to the gene sequence of locally cultivated soybeans to cultivate new high-yield and disease-resistant varieties, which led to a rapid recovery in U.S. soybean production.

When talking about Americans coming to China to collect soybeans, we have to mention Monsanto’s famous “soybean patent” incident.

Monsanto once applied for an international patent. They discovered a DNA sequence closely related to high-yield traits from a wild soybean sample from Shanghai, China. They then hybridized the wild soybean with cultivated soybeans and eventually obtained an extremely high-yield variety.

They filed 64 patent requests and wrote more than 90 pages of patent descriptions. Among them, the patent mentioned one point: "All soybeans containing these DNA sequences (whether wild soybeans or cultivated soybeans) and their offspring, and even other plants that have been transferred with these sequences, will be protected by patents."

Soybean breeding trials | United Soybean Board / flickr

Once this patent is approved, it means that Chinese people will no longer be able to grow soybeans containing these DNA sequences. Moreover, even if my country's wild soybean resources are extremely rich, Chinese scientists will no longer be able to use these sequences to breed new varieties, which will cause incalculable economic losses to my country. This is such an overbearing and shameless act.

When Chinese scientists heard the news, they were shocked and immediately checked the exchange records of plant samples between China and the United States, but they did not find the wild soybean sample collected from Shanghai. So where did Monsanto's sample come from? This story begins with American Richard L. Bernard.

Bernard is a famous soybean breeder in the United States and is also responsible for the collection of soybean germplasm resources for the United States Department of Agriculture. He participated in the visit of the American plant delegation to China in 1974, which was a very special era - the second year after US President Nixon visited China, and China and the United States had not yet established diplomatic relations.

During his visit, Bernard collected many wild soybean samples in Changchun, Gongzhuling, Shenyang, Nanjing and Shanghai, and brought them back to the U.S. for storage. The wild soybean sample with high-yield gene was collected by Bernard at the Shanghai Minhang Electric Motor Factory.

There are many examples of using the high-quality genes of wild soybeans in China to improve the traits of cultivated soybeans, and the improved soybean varieties are often returned to China to make huge profits. Although my country has also bred many excellent varieties, due to the patents approved by Monsanto, many core patented technologies are in the hands of foreigners. At this time, the wild population of Chinese soybeans is particularly important.

my country has long banned the illegal flow of wild rice, wild soybeans and other resources into foreign countries. Now, they have been included in the "National Key Wild Plant Protection List". The purpose is to protect the germplasm resources of crops such as rice and soybeans and to take the initiative in breeding into our own hands.

Wild rice | Daderot / Wikimedia Commons

As the saying goes, "Those who know it regard it as a treasure, while those who discard it regard it as a worn-out shoe." In the eyes of ordinary people, wild soybeans may just be weeds that can be found everywhere, but in the eyes of breeders, they are a treasure trove of genes containing excellent traits, waiting to be discovered.

References

[1]LIU

Author: Jian Yiling

Editor: Jianer

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