Increasing planting density is an important approach to achieve the potential of soybean yield

The soybean production in China is facing great challenges with the increasing soybean import.The weak international competitiveness for China's soybean is mainly due to lower yield,because the soybean unit yield in China is only about 60% of the average yield in U.S.,Brazil and Argentina based on the available data.At present,achieving the yield potential and narrowing the yield gap of soybean in China is an urgent issue since the limited arable land in China is not able to further extend the soybean planting area.With the improvement of seeding mechanization,increasing planting density is one of the most simple and effective approaches to raise the soybean yield by fully utilizing land and light energy resources.The high planting density technologies have realized high yields from various crops in China.In this study,we summarized the recent studies on soybean high planting density and highlighted future research direction,which would provide a theoretical basis for improving yield with high planting density and breeding varieties with density-resistant.