Soybean: A healthy nutritious complete food for vegetarians

The soybean (Glycine max.) was introduced in India in 1960s. The area under soybean was only 32000 hectare during in 1970s. It has been increased many fold and still there is vast potential of area expansion and productivity enhancement, however, area and production of soybean is stagnating since last 10 years at around 10 to 11 million hectare and production at around 10 to 12 Million Tones. Soybean cultivation has been expended in many countries because of its nutritive and economic importance and diverse domestic usage. India's share in the world's total area is about one percent and in production about 0.38% at present, however, area expansion as well as production of Soybean in the country during the last 40 years is rated as one of the striking occurrences in the agricultural development process. It is a prime source of vegetable oil in the international mark. Proximate composition of soybean whole seed contains 18–22% Oil, 39–42% Protein, 31–37% Carbohydrates, 4.9–5.0% Ashes. Out of total oilseed production of 29.25 Million Tones, we produce 11.54 Million Tones soybean, which is 39% of total production. Similarly, Soy oil is a primary source of edible oil and has 19% share in total consumption of vegetable oils in our country. Our domestic production of Soybean Oil is 1.66 M.T and consumption is 4.64 M.T. To meet our domestic requirement, country is importing around 3.00 Million Tones Soybean oil annually by incurring about 19000/-crores. The average globally, area, production and productivity of soybean is around 116.48 M hectares, 303.06 M T, 26.02 qtls/ha. respectively during 2013–16. The major five countries like USA, Brazil, Argentina, India and China account for more than 87% area and 90% production of soybean globally. The three major countries i.e USA, Brazil and Argentina alone comprising 71.13% area 82% Production of Soybean globally.