Shoot/Root Interactions Affect Soybean Photosynthetic Traits and Yield Formation: A Case Study of Grafting With Record-Yield Cultivars

Improvement of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] yield and photosynthesis physiology have been achieved over decades of cultivar breeding. Identification of the mechanisms involved in shoot-root interactions would be beneficial for the development of yield improvement breeding strategies. The objectives of this study were to investigate soybean shoot-root interactions with different-year released soybean cultivars and to evaluate their effects on grain yield and yield components. Soybean grafts used in this study were constructed with two record-yield cultivars Liaodou14 (L14) and Zhonghuang35 (Z35) and eleven cultivars released in 1966–2006 from the United States and Chinese. The grafting experiments were conducted as pot-culture experiments and repeated in 2014 and 2015. Our results showed that net photosynthesis rate (PN) was positively correlated to both root activity and root bleeding sap mass (RBSM) during the R6 reproductive stage. Moreover, different year-released soybean shoots had all exhibited capabilities of changing the root activity and architecture of L14 and Z35 rootstocks to “generation”-specific patterns during all reproductive stages. However, these influences were independent of the photosynthetic strength. Yield analysis had demonstrated that high-yielding root systems (L14 and Z35 rootstocks) could cause more than 15% of yield increase in seven out of eleven common scions in a scion-genotype-dependent manner. For Williams-descendant cultivar scions, L14 and Z35 rootstocks promoted yields mainly by increasing the seed number (SN), but those scions of Amsoy-descendent cultivars showed mainly seed weight (SW) increases when grafted onto L14 and Z35 rootstocks. On the other hand, although most tested common rootstocks did not show significant influence over the final yields in record-yield L14 and Z35 scions, they were obviously capable of shifting the formation of yield components when compared to L14 and Z35 self-grafting controls. Taken together, soybean shoots could influence the root physiology and played a crucial role in the determination of yield potentials. Synergistically with shoots, soybean roots played a more supportive role during the realization of yield potentials through root activities and by balancing the formation of yield components. These findings provided interesting insightful information for developing new breeding strategies which aim to pyramid elite physiological and yield traits by selecting specific parental combinations