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Lima bean research awarded $3.3 million from Specialty Crops Research Initiative


Davis, California, USA
October 25, 2022

Succotash lovers, rejoice: UC Davis researchers will lead a national effort to enlarge the resources for breeding tender, buttery lima beans. The project includes looking at key traits that people and growers crave, finding where those traits are located on the lima bean genome, breeding and field trials to grow plants with the those qualities, and creating a public database that other breeders can use to create new and better varieties.
 

A person's hand holding red beansThe project will include looking for delightful new colors and patterns for lima beans. Photo courtesy Antonia Palkovic/UC Davis Dept. of Plant Sciences
 

The Specialty Crops Research Initiative has awarded $3.3 million to support the project over four years. Department of Plant Sciences researchers will take the lead, with six other institutions participating. Antonia Palkovic, an associate specialist in the department, will be the principal investigator for the work at UC Davis.

About 60 percent of the world’s lima beans are grown in the United States, and about 99 percent of those are grown in California – nearly 5 million pounds in 2020, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture. But, as human-caused climate change makes the state warmer and drier, growers are looking for varieties that can thrive in new conditions.

“Lima beans have improved heat tolerance compared to common beans, such as black, pink, pinto and great northern beans,” Palkovic said. “This project gives us more resources for lima breeding to develop climate-resilient beans for future domestic production, and which also are well-suited to consumer preferences.”

The project is good news for improving Americans’ diet and anyone who appreciates Southern cuisine: A cup of properly cooked limas tastes sweet and nutty, is rich in minerals and vitamins, and offers protein, fiber and related health benefits.

North blends with south

The project will examine lima beans’ genome diversity by sequencing the entire available collection and mapping traits, said project director Paul Gepts, a distinguished professor of biodiversity and genetics in the department. Researchers especially want to locate genes that govern such qualities as resistance to disease and insects, drought and heat tolerance, nutritional qualities, and seed colors and patterns beyond the pale crescent-moons most people know. For that work, scientists will draw on the lima bean seed bank held by the United Stated Department of Agriculture at the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station in Pullman, Wash.

Genetically speaking, the Pullman seed bank is richly diverse. But, the collection comes from tropical and sub-tropical Latin America, where limas originated. There, summer days and nights are close to the same length of time. Most Latin American lima seeds, if planted in North America, won’t flower or bear fruit, Gepts explained.

In North America, summer nights are significantly shorter than the days. Limas grown here have adapted, but they are far less diverse genetically and lack many of the traits they need to thrive in a drier, warmer future - traits that still exist in their Latino cousins. “Here in California, the public breeding program has struggled for decades with the limited amount of materials adapted to our climate,” Palkovic said.

The researchers want to locate the genes that control indifference to night length, then cross-breed it into Latin American varieties – for example, those that naturally grow in very dry or very warm regions. Having that genetic map will shave off time and field space.

“This grant is going to make a huge impact on our capacity to develop improved lima bean lines,” Palkovic added.

Colleagues at the University of Delaware and UC Riverside will collaborate on the genome sequencing, mapping, and testing of field and consumer traits.
 

A person's hand holding a couple brown beans.Lima beans will be crossed with common beans to select for desirable new traits, including colors and patterns not usually seen in limas. Photo courtesy Antonia Palkovic/UC Davis Dept. of Plant Sciences
 

From genome to breeding

Project co-directors are Christine Diepenbrock and Travis Parker, an assistant professor and postdoctoral researcher in the department, respectively. The research initiative is part of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a branch of the USDA.

The project also includes:

  • Research to better understand the culinary and sensory traits preferred by consumers (Iowa State University and Delaware Valley University)
  • Storing the data generated in public databases at the USDA (GRIN-Global) and the Legume Information System, operated by the National Center for Genomic Resources in Santa Fe, N.M.
  • Using genomic information available in both lima and common beans to introduce adaptation traits into key lima bean varieties. This will develop genetic pools for future breeding programs.

 

Related links:

Gepts and Palkovic also were involved in sequencing the lima bean genome, in a collaboration involving UC Davis and Colombian and Mexican scientists: “Comprehensive genomic resources related to domestication and crop improvement traits in Lima bean,” Nature Communications, 2021.

More about the Gepts Lab.

 



More news from: University of California, Davis


Website: http://www.ucdavis.edu

Published: October 25, 2022

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