Purpose

Multidisciplinary research undertaking to evaluate the potential of soybeans as a source for commercially valuable antioxidant bioflavonoids.

In particular, the focus will be on oligomeric proanthocyanidins (OPCs), a group of phenolic compounds that are now obtained from pine bark or grapeseed. All have large and increasing sales as human dietary supplements. The compounds are known to occur in soybean seeds, especially those of highly colored varieties, which are of limited usefulness in the traditional soy markets.

Objectives

Plans are to apply a combination of chemical, genetic, and cell culture expertise to the goal of enhancing the yields and value of commercially important antioxidant bioflavonoid compounds
known to be present in soybeans.

Our goal is to combine researchers' and their labs' expertise to greatly enhance not only the total production of antioxidant compounds, but also to engineer and select strains and genotypes suitable for production of particular compunds

Impact

One potential outcome of this research would be to isolate genes specific for proanthocyanidin production and express them in cell lines of seeds. Such materials would potentially be able to supply a share of the growing demand for bioflavonoids.