Genome editing technology and application in soybean improvement

Soybean (Glycine max) is a legume crop with great economic value that provides rich protein and oil for human food and animal feed. In order to cope with the ever-increasing need for soybean products and the changing environment, soybean genetic improvement needs to be accelerated. In recent years, the rapid developed genome editing technologies, such as zinc finger nuclease (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR associated protein (CRISPR/Cas), have shown broad application prospects in gene function research and improvement of important agronomic traits in many crops, and has also brought opportunities for soybean breeding. Here we systematically reviewed recent advances in genome editing technology. We also summarized the significances, current applications, challenges and future perspectives in soybean genome editing, which could provide references for exerting the feature and advantage of this technology to better soybean improvement.