Coumarins for durable and sustainable plant protection

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Soybean is one of the most important crops worldwide. Its major diseases are Asian soybean rust, sudden death syndrome, and Sclerotinia stem rot (white mold). In the major soybean growing areas (USA, Brazil, Argentina), these diseases cause annual yield losses of several billion Euros a year. Resistant elite varieties are hardly available and cultivation practices and chemical or biological control measures are ineffective or highly expensive. Therefore, alternative measures for soybean disease control are urgently needed. Scopoletin, scoparone and ayapin are antimicrobial coumarins that are important for the disease resistance of many plants. They are almost absent from soybean. Our pilot studies demonstrate that the three coumarins can effectively fight the above-mentioned soybean diseases. Therefore, in a collaborative project with BASF Plant Science Company GmbH we aim at engineering and optimizing soybean plants with capacity to synthesize and accumulate scopoletin, scoparone, and ayapin for reducing susceptibility to Asian soybean rust, sudden death syndrome, and Sclerotinia stem rot. These plants can support reduced pesticide use in soybean production.