CUHK Passions and Pursuits

15 B eans are common foodstuff, but they remain the supporting cast in our diets. Few are aware that grain legumes contain more proteins than cereals and that soybean is a major source of protein meal and vegetable oil. In addition to its nutritional value, the agricultural properties of soybean may prove to make it the most important source of our food in future. Prof. Lam Hon-ming is a pioneer in enhancing the genetic make-up of soybean to help alleviating the looming problems in world food supply and security. Professor Lam had decoded the genomes of many wild and cultivated soybeans and concluded that wild soybeans have more genetic biodiversity within themselves than cultivated ones and that the recovery of those stress- tolerance genes lost in the process of domestication may lead to the breeding of soybean varieties that thrive in adverse environment. The publication of these findings in Nature Genetics in 2010 laid down the foundation for related research projects and programmes which had since mushroomed in many parts of the world. Professor Lam has been an advocate for a more prominent role for the soybean in our agricultural practice to address the issue of shrinking arable land worldwide. He said, ‘Grain legumes are currently underutilized despite their known benefits to agricultural productivity, sustainability and human health. Insufficient knowledge of legume science and technology also limits their production and consumption.’ The problems are more acute in China, where drought and land salinity have combined to diminish the arable land and the crop thereon every year. For over a decade, Professor Lam’s team had been adopting state-of-the- art genome sequencing technology to map the genetic make-ups of highly adaptive wild soybeans and cloning stress-tolerance genes from them with advanced molecular biology technique. In 2014, he successfully identified and cloned a new salt- tolerance gene from wild soybeans which greatly enhanced the efficiency of breeding salt tolerant soybeans. At the same time, Professor Lam lost no time in working with soybean breeders in China to produce soybeans that can be grown on saline lands. Experiments are also carried out in semi-arid and arid regions in Northwest China with the aim to identifying drought-tolerance genes from wild soybeans. The ultimate goal is to transfer the lab results to the fields and produce stress-tolerant soybeans. Professor Lam’s work has taken him to some of the most poorly endowed regions in China. He has been conducting fieldworks in collaboration with various agricultural institutes on the mainland to breed stress-tolerant soybeans and help to improve or restore arable land with pioneering crops. The experiments and experience in Qingyang and Pingchuan, Gansu, to name but two, are particularly encouraging. In these experiments, a newly-bred cultivar was selected because it requires very little water and can live longer to complete the growth cycle so that the land will be revived to the requisite level of biodiversity. The cultivar has all the characteristics of a first-generation migrant: resilience, thriftiness and flexibility. Bean for the Future Lam Hon-ming advocates bigger role for the soybean c c Biodiversity of soybean (courtesy of Prof. Lam Hon-ming)