Abstract

Soy bean plant (Glycine max, Merr.) has been known to, and cultivated by, the Mongoloid races for several centuries as one of their most important food crops and feed for their domestic stock, while it was not even widely known to the other races of mankind until so late as the 18th century. Manchuria, China, Korea and Japan were, and are still the chief countries of production and export of this most important legumi- nous crop to the other parts of the world. Soy bean seed is very rich in protein and fat of high biological value and contains vitamins A, B and D and is a good source of minerals like calcium, sodium, phosphorus and manganese. Its starch content is very low and is therefore of particular value as food for diabetics. The seed is used in a variety of ways as food by the Chinese and the Japanese. Soy bean meal and oil-cake are excellent feed for cattle, and the crop when cut and fed green or converted into hay forms a very valuable fodder rich in nitrogen comparable to alfalfa (lucerne) and clover in feed value. The cultivation of soy bean was started in the United States of America more than one hundred years ago, but the area occupied by it was very small and was only 2,000 acres in extent till 1914. From that year on- wards the expansion of the area under the crop was very rapid and at the present day it is reported to be occupying nearly six million acres in that country. Nearly 56 per cent of all the soy beans grown there is for use as hay. It is reported that soy bean hay cut at the proper time and well cured is almost equal, ton for ton, to alfalfa.

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