2006 Annual Report 4d.Progress report. This report serves to document research conducted during the first year under a specific cooperative agreement between ARS and Ohio State University. Additional details of research can be found in the report for the parent project 6645-21220-008-00D, Increasing The Competitive Position Of US Soybeans In Global Markets Through Genetic Diversity And Plant Breeding. The joint research goal is to determine whether alterations in seed fatty acid composition affect the course of soybean diseases and defense gene signaling. Work was begun to develop a lipid-related defense and signaling gene microarray to measure the expression of cotyledon and seed specific genes during pathogen infection. The array design includes jasmonic acid response, lipid biosynthetic, and target defense genes that were chosen based on data from soybean expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and published results from Arabidopsis and other plant sources. Gene sequences have been printed on glass slides. The microarray provides the necessary tool to assess defense gene expression in soybean lines with altered fatty acid composition that ARS, Raleigh has developed. Microarray hybridizations and data analysis will begin in 2007.