Application of Genomics to Innovation in the Lentil Economy (AGILE)

Lentil is an important food crop for the Canadian agricultural economy. Even if many improvements have been done in the past years, there are still opportunities to advance and upgrade. Especially research in lentil germplasm and crop wild relatives can be a relevant factor in an effective and sustainable development of crop production. This will be also possible thanks to the betterment of specific tools and database to support breeders and breeding program studies.

The Pulse Research Group at the University of Saskatchewan has the largest lentil, pea, and chickpea breeding programs in North America. It is a major research centre for legume genetic research and breeding. The Pulse Research Group has research partners both nationally and internationally (e.g. ICARDA, UC Davis, Washington State University, USDA-ARS). These institutions together with national pulse research programs in Morocco, Turkey, Bangladesh, Nepal and Spain will participate in this project. Their knowledge and local experience will be key to the success of our international field trials. The research plan will be structured as follow: 1) Sequencing cultivated and wild lentil germplasm; 2) Phenotyping cultivated and wild lentil germplasm in the three main lentil production macro environments; 3) Proof-of-concept: markers for use in lentil breeding; 4) In-depth analysis of beneficial traits: candidate gene identification and refinement of markers for light responses and nitrogen fixation traits; 5) Breeders Toolbox ( tools for interconnecting data and database integration).

The growth of the Canadian lentil industry has been an economic success. From zero in 1970, Canada became the world's largest lentil exporter in 2006 and the world's largest producer in 2008. But opportunity to advance and upgrade are still available. For this reason the projects aims research outcomes are oriented to an improvement of lentils germplasm evaluation with a consequent empowerment of database and integrated tools. Along this, ICARDA will mainly support genetic research in three main environment such as Morocco, Bangladesh and India. This possibilities of different agro-environment, will ensure more variability and broader data availability. From this cooperation with Canadian institutions, will be possible to strengthen the growing lentil sector and better evaluate new production opportunities.