Palmitic acid is the most abundant (approx. 11% of total fatty acids) saturated fatty acid in conventional soybean seed oil. Increasing the saturated acid content of soybean oil improves its oxidative stability and plasticity. We have developed three soybean mutants with high palmitic acid content by X-ray irradiation. In this study, we successfully identified the mutated sites of two of these high-palmitic-acid mutants, J10 and M22. PCR-based mutant analysis revealed that J10 has a 206,203-bp-long deletion that includes the GmKASIIA gene and 16 other predicted genes, and M22 has a 26-bp-long deletion in the sixth intron of GmKASIIB. The small deletion in M22 causes mis-splicing of GmKASIIB transcripts, which should result in nonfunctional products. In addition, we designed co-dominant marker sets for these mutant alleles and confirmed the association of genotypes and palmitic acid contents in F2 seeds of J10 X M22. This information will be useful in breeding programs to develop novel soybean cultivars with improved palmitic acid content. However, in the third mutant, KK7, we found no polymorphism in either GmKASIIA or GmKASIIB, which suggests that several unknown genes in addition to GmKASIIA and GmKASIIB may be involved in elevating the palmitic acid content of soybean seed oil.
