7 Breeding for Promiscuous Soybeans at IITA Hailu Tefera International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Chitedze Agricultural Research Station, P.O.Box 30258, Lilongwe Malawi 1. Introduction Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] is an annual legume that belongs to the legume family Fabaceae. It is a strictly self-pollinating legume with 2n = 40 chromosomes. With 40% protein, 20% oil and 30% carbohydrate, soybean plays a very significant role in world agriculture. World demand for soybean has been able to absorb ever-increasing production at prices that are profitable to producers. Since 1970, world consumption of soybeans has grown at an annual rate of 4.8% on average and since the 1990s it showed an annual increase of 5.4% on the average (Flaskerud, 2003). The world’s major supply of edible oil comes from soybean and it is likely that the trend will continue in the future. Soybean is also the major source of protein rich feed component for livestock, poultry, pig and fish farms. According to three-year (2006-2008) average data of FAOSTAT, 94.1 million hectares were allocated to soybean production in the world and 222.9 million tons of grain were obtained (http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567#ancor; Accessed 29 August 2010). For the same period, world average yield per ha was 2371 kg. Considering different continents of the world, Latin America had the highest area (41 million ha) and production (109.5 million tons) followed by North America with 30 million ha and 82 million tons. In the third place was Asia with 19.8 million ha and 26.8 million tons. The same data source showed that Africa’s soybean area (1.3 million ha) and production (1.4 million tons) was the lowest in the world. In terms of productivity per unit area, the highest 2742 kg ha -1 was from North America followed by South America (2673 kg ha -1 ), Europe (1517 kg ha - 1 ), and Asia (1351 kg ha -1 ). Africa’s average productivity per unit area (1073 kg ha -1 ) was the lowest among the continents and it was in fact, 45% of the world’s average. Pertaining to individual countries, the main producer of soybean in the world is USA and in the second and third places are Brazil and Argentina. These countries are followed by China and India. Average data (2006-2008) of FAOSTAT showed that area harvested in USA, Brazil and Argentina was 28.8, 21.3 and 15.8 million ha, respectively. The corresponding production figures were 79, 56.7 and 44.7 million tons for USA, Brazil and Argentina, respectively. Not less than 22 African countries produce soybean in varying quantities (Table 1). However, some soybean producing countries are not captured in FAOSTAT. A good example is Ghana where there is sizeable soybean production. The highest three-year (2006-2008) average production of 592,000 tons on an area of 625,667 ha was from Nigeria (Table 1). In the second place was South Africa with an average total production of 317,332 tons from 199,323 ha. Uganda was in the third place with 176,333 tons from 146,667 ha. Zimbabwe and Malawi were