Grant: Alliance Grants

The challenge for global crop production is the need to produce more food on the same amount of land to meet the needs of a human population that is estimated to double in 50 years. The increasing demand for food means that plant breeding programs will need to continually increase the yield bar. However, the concerns about feeding a projected population of 9 billion people by 2050 are coupled with heightened public concern about challenging climate change scenarios, and interest in increasing ecosystem diversity and reducing agrochemical inputs. Thus, there is a need to achieve food security targets with sustainable practices that increase agroecosystem diversity and reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides. 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. Another major achievement has been development of disease resistant varieties, especially navy beans with common bacterial blight (CBB) and anthracnose resistance, that increase the sustainability of bean production through reduced input needs. Innovation in breeding depends on new knowledge gained for the traits leading to increased productivity and sustainability. In the proposed work the genetics of yield, capacity for nitrogen fixation, drought tolerance, disease resistance, and bean quality, will be studied. These insights will allow us to develop molecular selection methods and advanced marker assisted selection tools that can be applied to make bean breeding more precise and efficient.