Do soya bean crops have a future in the UK?
© Tim Scrivener Could soya beans eventually become a break crop of choice for UK growers?
Currently, that’s difficult to believe with no more than 200ha grown in the UK last season – down from a recent high of 3,200ha in 2019.
A combination of a late harvest date, unpredictable autumn weather, higher wheat prices and more recently the attractiveness and lower risk of Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) options have contributed to the tiny area being grown commercially in the UK further reducing.
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But across the Channel, production of soya beans grew by about one-third in the EU in 2023 to 3m tonnes.
That’s still a miniscule amount compared with the 350m tonnes produced globally.
Increasing consumer demand for plant protein in Europe, a need for alternative break crops, plus policy drivers, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation and the European Green Deal Farm to Fork strategy, are all drivers in the growth of the market.
Farmers in the UK are recognising an increasing opportunity for soya beans to help reduce the amount of protein imported into the bloc.
Variety research
It is also driving increased research into the crop in Europe, not just for the southern latitudes where it is currently grown, but also for more northerly climates, which could help UK growers.
Soya bean is a short-day plant, meaning the longer days and shorter nights of northern European summers delay flowering and maturity.
As most varieties are bred for alternative markets much further south, they mature far too late in UK conditions, explains Niab’s plant breeder Dr Phil Howell.
To make soya beans truly competitive in the UK, a combination of earlier planting, earlier flowering as well as even earlier maturity is needed to make it a better fit into arable rotations, soil conditions and weather patterns.
“It’s currently the right crop but in the wrong place,” says Phil.
A Belgian start-up is among those trying to change that for northern European growers.
Inspired by helping farmers grow more sustainable, plant-based protein locally, Protealis, spun out of the VIB (Flemish Biotech Institute) and ILVO (Institute of Agricultural, Fisheries and Food Research) in 2021.
Breeding programme
Its soya bean breeding programme started in those academic institutes in 2013, says Dr David Buckeridge, who is board chairman for Protealis.
The aim is to breed varieties in the “000” maturity group that can be harvested in September in northern Europe.
“Protealis has lots of germplasm to look at. It’s how we exert selection pressure and how fast we can go that will define how relevant we will be for growers,” he says.
The firm is using tools such as speed breeding, which takes material from first cross to field trials in around 18 months to cut at least two years from development time.
“Effectively we’re using a vertical farm with a controlled LED-lit environment, which can deliver exactly the right light frequencies to encourage a soya bean to set seed more quickly and whiz through the breeding generations,” David explains.
In addition, data scientists collaborate with plant breeders to use artificial intelligence to make vast numbers of intelligent crossing and selection decisions based on genetic knowledge, as well as what the plants look like.
“We collect a huge amount of data from the plants in the field to feed and teach an algorithm, training it to get better and better at picking crosses. This allows us to put more selection intensity on our germplasm.
“Together with the speed breeding and skills of our breeders, this should help us breed new varieties on spec more quickly.”
The provision of the correct rhizobia bacteria inoculants is also vital.
“Soya has a symbiosis with rhizobia to fix nitrogen, and we strongly believe that having the correct rhizobium to work in northern European soil conditions is critical,” David says.
Protealis is building on “citizen science” research led by VIB’s Prof Sofie Goormachtig, where the Belgian public were asked to grow small areas of soya beans in their gardens.
Sofie’s research team isolated bacteria from root nodules growing on the soya to find strains that are adapted to a northern European climate.
© Mike Abram
“The other side is whether those strains can survive in what is an artificial environment travelling on a seed from seed processing to being drilled,” David says.
“We’re doing a lot of work on formulation, to ensure those rhizobia are viable over a long period of time.”
Protealis hopes to achieve that by developing a user-friendly, “ready-to-sow” soya seed coating, which avoids the need for manually inoculating bacteria onto the seed, he explains.
Six varieties
Thanks to the initial academic breeding programme, the firm already has six varieties commercially available in Belgium, France and Germany, while two years of UK trials have been conducted.
The key will be providing varieties that are agronomically and financially compelling for the grower, he says.
“That means offering a gross margin/ha which is competitive with what else could be done with that hectare.”
The aim is somewhere in the region of £850-£1,000/ha, which could potentially be enhanced using SFI payments, such as overwintered cover crops, he says.
Legumes are an attractive rotational crop to farmers, not least for the residual nitrogen to help with first wheat yields and reducing reliance on synthetic fertiliser, he says.
But the lack of stability with legume crop gross margins means that growing them in the past has meant sacrificing a profitable year in the rotation.
“Farmers can’t afford that; every year needs to make money.”
The argument for soya beans to be that legume is strong, he suggests.
“It delivers 40% protein and 20% oil content, which has a phenomenal profile for the downstream industry, whether it’s for feed or food, and there’s not another legume that can do 40% protein reliably.”
Another Protealis project, named Tast-Y, is looking to improve seed quality in soya for human consumption by reducing anti-nutritional factors.
These compounds have naturally evolved as plant defences and can interfere with nutrient absorption and cause digestive discomfort.
UK situation
Soya’s high protein and oil profile contributes to a potential high value market, which is also high volume and not particularly driven by quality considerations, says Dr David McNaughton from Soya UK, which markets “0000” varieties with even earlier maturity, bred in Ukraine.
“Almost any crop grown in the UK is usable and marketable,” he says.
Crops grown for Soya UK are mostly milled into flour for use within the bakery sector.
On paper, gross margins of around £600-£950/ha, based on a sale price of £500/t, growing costs of around £300/ha and yields of 1.8-2.5t/ha, are possible, he suggests.
“The gross margin is excellent, but very few growers are growing it despite this.”
A combination of better wheat prices, difficult autumns and the introduction of SFI options that act as a competition for pulse break crops has driven the area down, despite improved varieties, he suggests.
“The big change is varieties with two to three times thicker stems, which means they withstand weather better without lodging.
“In conjunction with a harvest date of mid-September means we do have varieties viable for the UK.”
Soya bean agronomy is reasonably straightforward, with readily controllable sclerotinia the only major disease concern.
Chemical availability for weed control, unlike other break crops, is also decent, he says, with it generally being tolerant of most products used on other pulses, plus some oilseed rape and potato chemistry.
“We’re probably better tooled up than ever before. But with the attractiveness of SFI, it is a hard sell currently,” he concludes.
© Toby Barber/Niab
Niab research
Niab’s soya bean research is evaluating global germplasm for genetics that are better suited to UK conditions, says Niab’s plant breeder Dr Phil Howell.
Early research has assembled material from global gene banks, which is being screened for spring cold tolerance, flowering time, yield potential and maturity in UK conditions.
“That’s the top-down type approach – see what survives when you plant a diverse range of material in tough conditions.”
A bottom-up approach, likely to fit better with science funders, is where genetic targets are identified, he says.
“For example, genes which we know from other species to be important for cold tolerance could be overexpressed or switched off using gene editing to see what happens.
“As the UK is so much further north than the main global soya bean growing areas, it is currently a small target market for potential breeding collaborations.
“If we can tweak the crop to make it better adapted, that might change.”
Why deforestation legislation could create opportunities for home-grown protein crops
UK and EU plant protein sources are dominated by large volumes of high-quality soya bean imported for feed and food manufacturing.
But new legislation to stop deforestation linked to food production could potentially alter the landscape.
The EU’s deforestation regulation (EUDR), due to come into force in December, means businesses bringing commodities, including soya, in or out of the EU must be able to trace their products to farm level.
They must also prove supply chains are not linked to illegal deforestation, biodiversity loss or labour and human rights abuses.
Those who do not comply could have shipments blocked, confiscated and be denied access to EU markets, as well as fined up to 4% of annual turnover in the EU.
A similar type of legislation is expected to be enacted in the UK, as an amendment to the Environment Act, in addition to the voluntary UK Soy Manifesto, to which many suppliers are already committed.
The impact of such legislation, plus consumer concern over genetically modified soya beans produced using intensive agricultural systems, is part of the reason behind increased interest in sustainable protein production.
“There has been a notable surge in funding opportunities for research into plant-based and other alternative proteins,” Phil notes.
For example, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Biotechnology Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK have recently awarded £15m to the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre.
The centre, based at the University of Leeds, will drive research and innovation in the alternative protein sector.
Niab is also involved in the new Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, based at Imperial College, London, which is researching cultured meats, precision fermentation and plant-based protein, Phil says.
“There’s a lot of interest in how to process plants and even using plant cells as factories for producing valuable chemicals.
“But equally there is a lot we can do just by using protein-rich crops as whole grains or as ingredients for upstream processing.
“There is so much improvement we can do on basic breeding and agronomy through relatively conventional means, rather than going through massive technological or ultra-processed routes.”
As well as soya bean, Niab is also seeking to improve or develop other legume crops, such as faba and phaseolus beans, chickpeas, lentils and lupins, Phil says.
“Faba bean is our leading opportunity as we know it grows well here.
“But not enough people realise it can be a very nutritious food or that it could displace significant amounts of soya, for both food and feed sectors.”
Niab is also leading a two-year, Defra-funded feasibility study on domestic chickpeas production, with ambitions for a similar project with lentils.
“In the longer term, lupin seeds have even better protein quality than soya beans, and also contain oil.
“Perhaps by improving the oil content, lupins could become a dual purpose crop like soya, which may change its processing value and marketing attractiveness.”
Research progress on earlier flowering
Researchers from the University of Vienna may have identified genes that could be used to adapt soya beans more to northerly climates.
A total of 140 Chinese and European soya bean varieties were characterised for genes known to control the time to flowering, and then grown in 17 locations within the Europe Soya Haberlandt project.
Controlling the time to flowering is essential for adapting varieties to a certain latitude, with earlier flowering helping to bring forward maturity.
Soya bean varieties are categorised into maturity groups based on the interaction of temperature and daylength with various genes that control flowering.
Four genes are particularly important in controlling the time to flowering in early maturing soya bean varieties.
The researchers found that flowering time gene variants in early maturing Chiness soya beans differ from those in European varieties.
They suggest that new combinations of these different sources could be used to breed varieties that are better adapted to northern regions.
