Analysis of tofu‐related traits by a bench‐scale tofu production method and their relationship with agronomic traits in European soybean

Abstract

European tofu manufacturers are becoming more and more interested in locally grown soybeans. A prerequisite for the development of European tofu cultivars is to improve our understanding of how the environment and genetics affect soymilk and tofu quality, as well as how quality and agronomic traits are correlated. This study was based on 215 recombinant inbred lines derived from two populations and grown at three locations that were evaluated for tofu traits in a bench-scale tofu laboratory. The heritabilities of most of the evaluated tofu traits were moderately high with h 2 > 0.6. We observed significant genotypic variance components, but an even stronger contribution of the location. The network analysis of the evaluated traits was population-dependent; however, the tofu traits were not associated with any of the agronomic traits. Collectively, our results indicate the potential to improve tofu-related traits in European soybean. The bench-scale tofu production method provides a valuable tool to test soybean lines in breeding programmes; however, the method needs to be further improved and automated to minimize errors due to the laboratory staff.

A small-scale tofu test for soybean breeding programs

“…In this set of trials, magnesium chloride 0.25% (MC25) was the least useful coagulant for breeding purposes. Narrow-sense heritability for tofu texture was low for MC25 (0.25) and moderately high for MC15 and GDL (0.87 and 0.79, respectively), similar to previous estimates (Aziadekey et al 2002;Kurasch et al 2018). While the 0.25% MgCl 2 coagulant concentration is the concentration most commonly used by tofu manufacturers in Japan (Toda et al 2003), this does not mean it is most useful for discriminating among varieties, indeed it may be used to lessen the variability among Fig.…”

Evaluation of the genetic architecture of tofu traits in soybean towards genomics‐assisted breeding

“…Our study was based on 278 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from three crosses among the three parental soybean cultivars ‘Primus’ (P2), ‘Protina’ (P3) and ‘Sigalia’ (P5) from the maturity groups “00” and “000,” which have been described by Kurasch et al. (). The number of progenies from each cross varied from 78 RILs in the cross ‘Primus × Sigalia’ (F002) to 93 RILs in the cross ‘Protina × Sigalia’ (F003) and 116 RILs in the cross ‘Primus’ × ‘Protina’ (F020).…”

“…Tofu traits are affected by a range of different factors, including the environment, the genotype and production protocols and conditions (Kurasch, Hahn, Miersch, Bachteler, & Würschum, ). As the phenotyping of tofu‐related traits is complex and costly, it is not feasible on a large scale as required for breeding programmes.…”

“…In our study, we focus on soymilk weight, tofu weight, tofu yield, tofu hardness and tofu value as these traits are well suited to characterize the tofu suitability of a genotype (Kurasch et al., ). Besides these tofu‐related traits, we also investigated the seed quality traits, protein content and thousand‐kernel‐weight.…”

“…Besides these tofu‐related traits, we also investigated the seed quality traits, protein content and thousand‐kernel‐weight. Both are often stated to be important for tofu production and associated with tofu yield and quality, even though the reported results are inconsistent (Aziadekey, Schapaugh, & Herald, ; Bhardwaj et al., ; Huang, Kaletunc, St. Martin, Feller, & Mchale, ; Kurasch et al., ; Lim, DeMan, DeMan, & Buzzell, ). Soaking of soybean seeds is the initial step in the tofu production with the aim to soften the beans for the following grinding with water, which results in soymilk.…”