Necessity and challenges for exploration of nutritional potential of staple-food grade soybean

Soybean, one of the most important crops is well recognized globally for its nutritional value. Soybean has a balanced proportion of nutrients, minerals, and other bioactive compounds with enormous medicinal and in-dustrial uses. Soybean is also one of the leading oil crops as well as a source of protein-rich food and feed. However, the worldwide acceptance of soybean as a staple food crop has certain limitations. The anti-nutritional factors and off-flavor-producing compounds present in soybean make it unacceptable to the masses. With the ever-growing global population, it has become necessary to develop a potent source of nutrients to tackle the rising hidden hunger. The development of staple food-grade soybean could probably suffice the nutritional re-quirements. The present review discusses the potential of soybean as a source of nutritive proteins and edible oil and the scope for their improvement. The approaches helpful to eliminate anti-nutritional factors are also dis-cussed. Similarly, the efficient use of genome editing tools for the improvement of nutritional traits in soybean is described. The information on desired alleles, causal genetic variations, and genome editing opportunities provided here will be helpful to develop anti-nutrient free staple food-grade soybean. Efforts toward the development of food-grade soybean will be helpful to address the global malnutrition issue.

Automated summary

Soybean is an important crop globally, known for its nutritional value and industrial uses. However, the presence of anti-nutritional factors and off-flavor-producing compounds limits its acceptance as a staple food. Developing anti-nutrient free soybean could help address global malnutrition.