Jia-rong ZHU, Yi HUANG, Qing-nan HAO, Song-li YUAN, Shui-lian CHEN, Li-miao CHEN, Chan-juan ZHANG, Wei GUO, Zhong-lu YANG, Dong CAO, Hong-li YANG, Chao LI, Wan-wan LIANG, Hai-feng CHEN, Bei HAN
Soybean (Glycine max) is a vital global source of protein and oil, playing a crucial role in ensuring food security and meeting nutritional and health demands. Against the backdrop of global climate change and evolving trade patterns, breeding soybean varieties with low photoperiod sensitivity has become an important strategy to address these challenges, expand cultivation areas, increase yield per unit area, and enhance national food security. Soybean is highly sensitive to photoperiod, which significantly regulates its growth period, yield formation, and environmental adaptability. This is specifically reflected in the influence of photoperiod on key yield-related agronomic traits-such as flowering time, maturity, plant height, node number, branch number, and hundred-seed weight-thereby determining the adaptability of soybean to different ecological regions. Therefore, reducing photoperiod sensitivity is a key breeding objective for achieving high and stable soybean yield and broadening the latitudinal adaptation range of varieties. This review systematically summarizes recent advances in the identification of photoperiod-regulated flowering-related genes and loci such as E1 to E11, the Tof series, and FTs, and outlines the molecular pathways regulating flowering under long-day, short-day, and broad adaptation conditions. Furthermore, it discusses photoperiod-related loci and genes such as E8, Dts, RIN1, and PH13 that regulate maturity and yield traits, and summarizes molecular mechanisms through which photoperiod affects yield traits from the perspectives of photoperiod–shoot apical meristem development and photoperiod–gibberellin signal synergistic regulation pathways. Finally, it prospects the development pathways for breeding low photoperiod-sensitive soybeans, providing theoretical support for mining superior photoperiod-responsive genes, elucidating the molecular regulatory network of photoperiod-controlled growth period and yield traits, and enhancing both yield potential and environmental adaptability.