Modern genetic analysis and manipulation of soybean ( Glycine max) depend heavily on an efficient and dependable transformation process, especially in public genotypes from which expressed sequence tag (EST), bacterial artificial chromosome and microarray data have been derived. Williams 82 is the subject of EST and functional genomics analyses. However, it has not previously been transformed successfully using either somatic embryogenesis-based or cotyledonary-node transformation methods, the two predominant soybean transformation systems. An advance has recently been made in using antioxidants to enhance Agrobacterium infection of soybean. Nonetheless, an undesirable effect of using these antioxidants is the compromised recovery of transgenic soybean when combined with the use of the herbicide glufosinate as a selective agent. Therefore, we optimized both Agrobacterium infection and glufosinate selection in the presence of L-cysteine for Williams 82. We have recovered transgenic lines of this genotype with an enhanced transformation efficiency using this herbicide selection system.