Advancement – the decision to advance a variety to the next stage of testing or commercialization.
Commercial variety – soybean varieties that are being sold in the marketplace.
Commercialize – the decision to begin selling a variety.
Elite – commercial varieties that have relatively high performance in famers’ fields.
Experimental variety – a non-commercial soybean variety that is being evaluated in yield trials.
Grower – farmers or farm managers that select, purchase, and plant commercial soybean varieties.
Performance – the amount of grain per unit of land that a soybean variety produces. Grain yield in soybeans in the United States is measured in bushels per acre.
Selection – the act of choosing a variety for advancement or commercialization.
Stage – the current testing level of a hybrid. It is analogous to grade levels in school.
Stage gate – the requirements of a variety to qualify to a higher stage of testing or commercialization.
Type I error – a false positive. In this case, it refers to advancing or commercializing a variety that does not actually deserve to advance.
Yield Test – the experiment in which an experimental soybean variety is grown where grain production per variety is the primary characteristic of performance.
Parent line – variety that is crossed with another to generate offspring.
Offspring – varieties created from the cross of two parent lines.
SNP genetic marker – genetic information of parents and offspring can be characterized by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). An SNP is a single base-pair difference in the DNA sequence of individual variety.