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Extract from NBC News and Foster’s Daily Democrat (Christopher Leonard)
Melding the low-lin strain of soybean into Monsanto’s line of commercial crops could have taken many years, said Joe Byrum, Monsanto’s trait integration team leader.
Mixing a low-lin bean with a premium soybean produces offspring that still have a lot of genetic “junk,” as Byrum puts it. While the low-lin trait might be there, the “junk” could yield a spindly plant with skimpy bean production. The goal is to find that one-in-a-million seed with the low-lin trait and nothing else but the premium genes.
“It’s a needle in a haystack,” Byrum said. “So if I have a tool that can go in and pick out the needle every time, that’s very efficient.”
The tool Byrum uses to pick out the needle is called a genetic marker. Byrum can take a leaf sample from a soybean sprout and instantly tell if the seed contains the low-lin trait.
But breeding is a game of big numbers, Byrum said. It’s a matter of finding the right trait hundreds of thousands of times until the offspring is narrowed down to the right cross — the soybean plant with the low-lin trait and thoroughbred yield performance.
Monsanto has sped up this numbers game at its laboratory in Ankeny, Iowa. The lab is a hub for the company’s global chain of greenhouses. Seeds are sprouted there daily, eliminating winter downtime, letting Monsanto breed about three soybean generations annually, Byrum said.
Genetic samples are taken the moment a seed spouts — whether in the Midwest, Puerto Rico or Hawaii — and then sent back to Ankeny. Byrum’s team analyzes them using genetic markers, then quickly crunching the results on computers to determine which seeds are winners. Byrum said his lab receives hundreds of thousands of seed samples at a time, and must analyze them in about two weeks.
Joseph Byrum is an accomplished executive leader, innovator, and cross-domain strategist with a proven track record of success across multiple industries. With a diverse background spanning biotech, finance, and data science, he has earned over 50 patents that have collectively generated more than $1 billion in revenue. Dr. Byrum’s groundbreaking contributions have been recognized with prestigious honors, including the INFORMS Franz Edelman Prize and the ANA Genius Award. His vision of the “intelligent enterprise” blends his scientific expertise with business acumen to help Fortune 500 companies transform their operations through his signature approach: “Unlearn, Transform, Reinvent.” Dr. Byrum earned a PhD in genetics from Iowa State University and an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
