Plant Systems: Improving bean yield under drought and salinity stress

Improving Tolerance of Common Bean to Abiotic Stress workshop participants

The yield of crops worldwide is reduced significantly below its potential by both physical and biological stresses, especially drought, salinity, and pathogens. Improving yield could result in food for millions of people and preservation of natural lands by limiting the extent of land use for agriculture.

WUN, the University of Washington, and CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture) sponsored a workshop on “Improving Tolerance of Common Bean to Abiotic Stress” held at CIAT  in Cali, Colombia, on 2-4 November 2010.  Participants included scientists from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Africa, and the USA, covering fields of bean breeding, physiology, pathology, molecular genetics, and high-throughput phenotyping.  Graduate students from CIAT and abroad were included; the equitable gender mix, superb facilities offered by CIAT, and informal atmosphere contributed to the meeting’s success.

Collaboration among breeders, physiologists and molecular geneticists led to construction of an overall workplan following a path from agronomic to mechanistic research.  The aim is to discover and develop new bean genotypes tolerant to environmental pressures newly arising from climate change, and movement of beans to new geographical regions.  Exploration of wild lines, breeding and phenotyping will be conducted with emphasis on screening for tolerance to multiple stresses.  Comparative physiology and functional analysis will lead toward developing tools for breeding, and on-farm testing. Collaboration with the CIAT office of Participatory Research and Gender Analysis Program at CIAT will be pursued, in conjunction with WUN programs (e.g. Gender and Climate Change). 

Specific outcomes of the workshop include:

  • List of germplasm available for common use;
  • Submission of research proposal to USAID, identification of other funding sources;
  • Opportunties for students to exchange among labs, in particular internships at CIAT;
  • Special issue of Functional Plant Biology including a ‘white paper’ on improving beans (Sep 2011);
  • Plan to reconvene at the Bean Improvement Cooperative biennial meeting October 2011