• The soybean or bean is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses.
• Soybeans are used to feed livestock, make biodiesel, and processed into many food and household products.
• Iowa and Illinois are the top soybean producing states in the country.

Did you know that plants are able to sense their environment and actually respond appropriately? One of the key parameters that every plant must respond to is the direction of gravity: stems go up (opposite to the pull of gravity) and roots go down (in the same direction as the force of gravity).

By sensing gravity, plants can turn sideways, upside down, etc. Scientists first theorized that the plant could tell by the warmth of the soil, but now we know that they sense gravity and automatically know where down is and grow upwards. This is a crucial skill for the plant because they need to grow upwards and get their leaves out of the soil so they can reach the sunlight and grow. Even though it seems easy to understand that plants sense gravity, the actual mechanisms inside the plant roots are quite complicated. Statocytes are a kind of cell that surrounds the rootlet tips. Inside statocytes, the statoliths act as a motion sensor. Movements of these small bodies allow the roots to understand the direction of gravity.