NSERC Alliance recently announced $1.1 M of funding for the Bean Breeding and Genetics program in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph. The 5 year grant matches $550,000 over five years provided by the Ontario Bean Growers to support the development of new dry bean varieties for production in Ontario.
The University of Guelph Bean Breeding Program in the Department of Plant Agriculture is led by Peter Pauls and organized by technician Lyndsay Schram.
The objectives of the NSERC Alliance research project entitled “Bean Breeding for Environmental Sustainability and Increased Profitability” are to:
- develop high-yielding, disease-resistant, novel bean lines for commercialization and utilization by bean growers in Ontario, Canada, and the rest of the world;
- discover new knowledge about genes that control: a) yield; b) disease resistance; c) drought tolerance d) variability for N2 fixation capacity and e) bean quality (especially seed coat colour and protein quantity); and
- educate highly qualified personnel for the pulse industry in Canada.
The common dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is the staple food for >300 million people worldwide. In 2021 Canadian bean production of 386,000 tons was worth more than $350M. Beans also contribute to Canadian society through their beneficial effects on human health and their positive effects on the environment through their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Crop breeding has delivered yearly increases in productivity; average bean yields in Ontario have increased, by 2% per year over 30 years, leading to increased profitability in the farming community. The Ontario Bean Producers estimated that the yield bonus attributable to growing higher yielding beans, like Dynasty, exceeded $3.75M/y.
In the proposed work the new knowledge of the genetics of yield, capacity for nitrogen fixation, drought tolerance, disease resistance, and bean quality, that will be gained will allow the program to develop molecular selection methods and advanced marker assisted selection tools that can be applied to make bean breeding more precise and efficient.
