Soybean: the unsuspected Paludophyte

Abstract

[Extract] Commercial varieties of soybean (Glycine max L.) are intolerant of drought and transient waterlogging when grown as a summer crop in northern Australia. In this regard, soybean behaves as a typical upland grain legume. It is therefore not surprising that reports in the early 1980s of soybean growing and yielding well on soils with a water table maintained just below the soil surface were met with scepticism. Slowly, however, agronomists accepted that soybean can acclimate to sustained waterlogging of most of the soil profile; the physiological basis of this phenomenon is the subject of this case study.