Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Climate change is already unfolding on Canada's prairies. Canada is a top global exporter of pea, a crop mainly grown in western Canada. Pea crops on the prairies yield poorly and inconsistently in warm summers because they experience heat stress in the growing season. Yield instability and reductions negatively affect the pea industry and exports. Pea cultivars (varieties) tested in the last decade have shorter crop life cycles and likely more aborted flowers and pods in warm or dry summers, resulting in low yield. Our pea cultivars need to be more heat tolerant. Surprisingly, the pea crop is still waiting to be improved for a range of stresses.This project looks at several cultivars that were selected for Saskatchewan along with other potentially heat tolerant cultivars to see how heat tolerance in pea can be improved. A collection of 94 pea cultivars from Europe, North America and Australia, representing potentially warmer regions, will also be screened under controlled high temperature (32 degrees Celcius), along with pea derived from crosses of two specific parents. Our aim is to identify the key mechanisms associated with improving flowering and pod yield in heat through a better flowering pattern and pollination. Currently we suspect high flower abortion, short flowering duration, and poor pollen viability all contribute to our pea cultivars being sensitive to heat.Our overall goal is to identify heat tolerant germplasm, identify which traits need to be improved, and then breed these traits (better flowering and better pollination ability) into future cultivars for sufficient heat tolerance. Such improved cultivars will yield better in warmer years compared to the current cultivars grow in western Canada.