Introduction to the Soybean Topical Issue and the upcoming World Soybean Research Conference 11

This is anOpe Soybean is the major protein and oilseed crop of the world, which is utilized for the production of livestock feed, numerous food components, and non-food products. In 2021, world soybean production has reached an all-time-high with a global planting area of over 129million hectares. While Brazil and the United States were growing 39 and 34.9mio ha, respectively, the European soybean production area was about 5.5mio ha, of which only about 900 000 ha were grown in the European Union (FAOSTAT, 2023). This topical issue ofOCL on soybean is devoted to relevant questions related to production, breeding, processing, and feeding. In 11 different contributions, the issue provides insights into specific soybean cases discussed at present. The rapid expansion of soybean production in Brazil during the last 30 years is illustrated in terms of geography, yield increase, land protection, and economic importance (Cattelan and Dall’Agnol, 2018); increased soybean production in Brazil is closely associated with increased meat production both in Brazil and world-wide. In contrast, European Union soybean production (Debaeke et al., 2022) is evaluated in the light of its heavy dependency on overseas meal imports for feeding; the study demonstrates that only under a best-case scenario involving reduced meat consumption and thus increased arable land availability, soybean imports could be reduced to 15% by the year 2050. In Central European countries such as Germany, Austria or Switzerland, organic soybean production is gaining in importance. For Switzerland, Klaiss et al. (2020) take a look at the needs of organic soybean production such as weed competitiveness; they identified soy-food production as a main market driver, and they summarized practical organic soybean production guidelines. For simulating soybean production in Iran, crop modelling was implemented by utilizing model parameters from regional experimental results, which revealed potential yields in the range of 1.8 to 4.7 t ha 1 under Iranian growing conditions (Nehbandani et al., 2020). Genetic differences in soybean root architecture traits are of interest both to select for increased di-nitrogen fixation per unit area as well as for drought tolerance, but reliable and high-throughput imaging methods are required for appropriate