Current Achievement and Perspectives of Seed Quality Evaluation in Soybean

Soybean is one of the most important sources of protein and oil in the world. Recently, emphasis has been laid on the chemical composition of soybean seeds for the processing soybean foods. Improvement of soybean components has been expected to improve food-processing quality for the processed soybean products such as soymilk and various edible ingredients as well as fur the traditional soyfoods. In Korea, soybean breeding research programmes have been focused on the quality of the products derived from soybean with yield stability, and some new modified soybean varieties haying good food-processing quality were developed recently. So the efforts of establishing standard and standardization of products in soybean are important. Three main categories should be considered in view of soybean seed quality; the marketing value such as grain size, shape, and appearance; the eating and processing value such as dehulled ratio, water absorption rate, and benny flavor; the nutritional value such as protein, lipid, and carbohydrate contents. And the new frontiers in research are looking at the functional nutrients in soybeans and how to improve them. In case marketing value, mainly the appearance is evaluated, therefore, each country has an application of standard related to quality. Each determination of standard class, heat-damaged kernels, splits, and soybeans of other colors is made on the basis of the grain when free from foreign materials. But processing value and nutritional value for standardization were not studied in detail till now. In addition, soybean has potential roles in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, most notably cancer, osteoporosis, and heart disease. The functional nutrients include a protease inhibitor, phytic acid, saponins, and isoflavones, etc.. It is believed that standardization of soybean quality should perform to overcome the difficulties, relatively high price of domestic soybean products has weakened the competitive power, in the market related to WTO. So, we should focus on further research into the evaluation and establishment of quality-standard in soybean.

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