Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) is the second most important pulse crop after pea grown on the Canadian Prairies, and Canada is the world's largest lentil exporter. Competitiveness of Canadian lentil in the world market is highly dependent on maintaining high seed quality and yields whilst simultaneously striving at reducing production costs. Primarily three diseases, ascochyta blight, anthracnose and stemphylium blight, remain a major impediment to this goal despite an increasing use of fungicides. The most economical and environmentally-friendly way of managing these diseases is the development of varieties with durable resistance. Since resistance sources in the cultivated lentil species have been exhausted or are unavailable, we have been screening wild relatives for such resistance genes that can be hybridized with the cultivated lentil to transfer the resistance gene into lentil through conventional crossing. To simplify this process and make it more efficient, we propose to identify the resistance genes in one of the most promising wild lentil species through various molecular techniques that allow us to develop tags that can then be used to identify those individuals in the offspring of such crosses for further breeding into new varieties. At the same time, we also propose to conduct research that elucidates the mechanisms of how these resistance genes function. Understanding the mechanism will allow us to pick those that are most likely to be most effective over long periods of time in lentil fields. In doing so, we can utilize and combine these genes in a new generation of lentil varieties. In the long run, we anticipate that this will reduce the need for pesticide applications in lentil fields, and preserve the attractiveness of lentil as a rotational crop. This in turn will have the environmental benefits of reducing the reliance on mineral nitrogen fertilizer as lentil can fix nitrogen from the air. Better disease resistance will protect yield and lentil seed quality, thereby securing the income of Canadian farmers, ensuring that Canada will maintain its position as the number 1 exporter, and as such, maintain Canada's contribution to world food security, in particular in many underdeveloped countries.