The phytate level in soybean seeds is an important nutritional consideration in animal feed because phytic acid can chelate mineral nutrients when consumed by non-ruminant animals. This can result in a reduction of the availability of nutritionally important minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc. The salts that are formed by phytic acid can also become a pollution problem when excreted in the manures of poultry and swine. Previous research has indicated that the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers Satt237 on soybean linkage group N and Satt561 on linkage group L are associated with quantitative trait loci for phytate level in soybean. We have been working on a series of backcrosses with marker assisted selection at each backcross stage. SSR markers have enabled us to identify which specific BC1F1, BC2F1, and BC3F1 individual plants had DNA with the greatest commonality with the genome of the recurrent parents 5601T and Allen. At present we are screening BC4F1 plants from our winter nursery to identify which plants are double heterozygotes for the two known low phytate markers. Concurrently we are screening for markers to fully capture the 5601T and Allen recurrent parent genomes.