Abstract:

Soybean, also known as a miracle crop of many uses has about 20% oil and 40% protein content. Soybean is a source of food in form of sauce, snacks, Soymilk, beverage, baby foods, porridge and soymeal. It is a source of vegetable oil and feeds for livestock and poultry. In addition, soybean helps in soil fertility and structure improvement through nitrogen fixation. However, its production in Uganda is constrained mainly by pests and diseases, drought, poor soil fertility and use of poor-quality seed. The research effort for the past years has been directed to development of soybean varieties that are high yielding, early maturing and resistant to pests and diseases. In the 1990s new soybean varieties namely Namsoy1, 2 and 3 with resistance to rust were first released but later succumbed to soybean rust and thus were phased out and have been replaced with other new resistant varieties namely MAKSoy1N, 2N, 3N, 4N, 5N and 6N. Out of the 6 new varieties MAKSoy1N, 3N, 4N, 5N are expected to do well in the PRELNOR project area. This manual is thus very key in facilitating promotion of the new varieties through training, seed production and promoting adoption of the new varieties in the project area.