<p style="text-align: justify;">Soybean (<i>Glycine max</i> L. Merr.), is grown primarily for its seed which has many uses in the food and industrial sectors and represents one of the major sources of edible vegetable oil and of proteins for livestock feed use. A major food use of soybean in North America and Europe is as purified oil, used in margarines, shortenings, and cooking and salad oils. It is also a major ingredient in food products such as tofu, tempeh, soya sauce, simulated milk and meat products, and is a minor ingredient in many processed foods. Soybean meal is used as a supplement in feed rations for livestock. The major producers of soybeans are the United States, Brazil, Argentina, China, India, Paraguay and Canada.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">Weeds are a major production problem in soybean cultivation. Typically, weeds are managed using a combination of cultural (<i>e.g.</i> seed bed preparation, using clean seed, variety selection, and planting date) and chemical controls. Depending on the production area and the prevalent weed species, herbicides may be applied before planting (<i>e.g.</i> pendimethalin, trifluralin, metribuzin), after planting but before emergence (<i>e.g.</i> pendimethalin, linuron, imazethapyr), and/or after emergence (<i>e.g.</i> bentazon, acifluorfen, fomesafen). Commonly, several different herbicides are required to adequately control weeds in soybean fields.</p>

<p style="text-align: justify;">DP356043 has been transformed to express two novel genes, providing tolerance to two different classes of herbicide. The line contains two genes; <i>gat4601</i> which provides tolerance to glyphosate by detoxifying the compound, while <i>gm-hra</i> encodes for a modified acetolactate synthase (ALS) enzyme which is not affected by the imidazolinone class of ALS inhibiting herbicides. The <i>gat4601</i> gene is based on the sequences of three <i>gat</i> genes from the common soil bacterium <i>Bacillus licheniformis</i>. The GAT4601 protein is 84% homologous to each of the three native GAT proteins from which it was derived. In DP356043, the expression of the <i>gat4601</i> gene is driven by the constitutive synthetic core promoter SCP1. The GM-HRA protein in DP356043 is a modified version of the soybean GM-ALS protein. GM-ALS is involved in branched chain amino acid (leucine, isoleucine and valine) biosynthesis in the plastid. The herbicide tolerant <i>gm-hra</i> gene was made by isolating the herbicide sensitive soybean <i>gm-als</i> gene and introducing two specific amino acid changes, known to confer herbicide tolerance to tobacco ALS. The GM-HRA protein is &gt;99% homologous to the native GM-ALS protein from which it was derived. In DP356043, the expression of the <i>gm-hra</i> gene is driven by the soybean constitutive S-adenosyl-L-methionine synthetase (SAMS) promoter.</p>
