Crops are Cotton, soybean, pea, lupin, broccoli, apple. Most important traits are resistance against diseases and pests, nutient use efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance, product technological quality, protein quality,  

Constrains: unsecure weather events (drought, flooding, flooding, frost) and massive attack of pest and diseases

I work mainly with cowpeas, sweet potatoes and cabbages.

Groundnut (Peanut)

Groundnut (Peanut)

Drought tolerance/resistance,  diseases (particularly leaf spots, rosette & aflatoxin) reistances and oil content are focus traits

Phenotyping protocols and facilities for drought and aflatoxin are not to the level where acurate predictions can be made. Screening are usually made under natural conditions as facilities for phenotyping under controlled conditions are limited or lacking. Most of the breeding programs do not have the necessary facilities for routinely analysing oil content and quality in large number of breeding lines.

The crops: Cowpea, Pearl millet, Sorghum and Bambaragroundnut. Important phenotypic traits include grain size, grain colour, date to maturity and Biomass.

I'm working with peanut and the three most important phenotypes we're looking for in our breeding program are drought tolerance, oil quality and pre-harvest aflatoxin contamination resistance. For drought tolerance, the peanut research community has been extensively screening large panel of genotypes for identifying surrogates that breeders could use when selecting for drought tolerance but I think it's still challenging to make decision when it comes to choose surrogates for drought tolerance in peanut. Indeed, correlation entre surrogates and yield and/or yield components may depend upon drought stress severity and even with standardized phenotyping protocols the magnitude of the correlation was not always very similar.

For aflatoxin contamination resistance, it's really challenging to phenotype genotypes under uniform pattern of the fungus. Then in most of the studies, there's a large variability between replications for a given genotype. Therefore, it is difficult to select for resistant genotypes due to the nature of the infestation.

Dry bean Phaseolus vulgaris.  Critical traits are end user traits,  seed size, color, shape,  lack of defects, canning quality,  follow this with agronomic traits,  maturity,  lodging resistant,  uniform dry down,  third group is specific disease resistance traits without which the variety will fail either in seed multiplication or production.

Peanut.

Disease resistance, drought tolerance, quality

phenotyping for aflatoxin (a quality issue) is very difficult

Crops: Groundnut/Peanut, Common bean, soybean and rice. The constraints other than yield are the expected ones: biotic and abiotic stresses. There are important considerations for downstream usage (e.g. oil content, size, etc.) that affect their value, but the ability to grow without extensive inputs is important.

Dry beans. Critical phenotypes besides yield are seed quality traits (shape, size, color, canning, etc.), plant architecture, maturity and plant drydown. Then you have all the traits related to both biotic and abiotic stress.

I work with potato, sweetpotato, maize. Storage capacity (potato, sweetpotato); disease resistance; abiotic stress tolerance.

Crop: common beans in Central America; Constraints: diseases (many); production system appropriate architecture; local control of seed industry by small-holder farmers. Key phenotype constraints: accurate genotyping to preclude time-consuming phenotyping.

Groundnut (Peanut):

Traits: Diseases (Groundnut rosette disease and leaf spots); quality (aflatoxin and high oleic) and drought

Peanut. Disease resistance (foliar diseases, TSWV, sclerotium), drought tolerance, aflatoxin. Drought tolerance is hugely complex, still poorly defined in the crop, environment dependent. To tackle drought, it is necessary to have basic understanding of the environment, as well as the anatomical/physiological traits that may help good yield under hydric stress - the lack of this leads to wasted time and resources. Aflatoxin phenotyping is also difficult to reproduce. 

1. We work with potato & sweetpotato. Most important phenotypes: a) Root & Tuber set morphology and adaptation; b) taste often with considerable variation from region to region / subregion to subregion, nutrient density  & processing attributes such as low sugar; c) sweetpotato virus disease resistance; potato late blight resistance, potato leafroll virus (PLRV) resistance, Potato virus Y (PVY) resistance, Nematode resistance.

Banana/plantain, cassava, sweetpotato, and yams (Dioscorea rotundata, D. alata). Important phenotypes include pest & disease resistance, cooking quality, and transportability/shelf life.

I work with commoon bean;mostly with dry beans but also with snap beans. The most important phenotypes in my program is genetic resistance to diseases caused by pathogens with extensive virulence diversity. These pathogens include those that cause the rust, anthracnose, angular leaf spot,and halo blight diseases. These r some of the most devatating diseases of common bean in Africa and the Aericas. These virulerence of these pathogens may change from one year or location to another. When new races appear varities with single disease resitance genes are at most risk and often loose their resistance. Yield and pod and seed quaity loses may be very high.The phenotype of these diseasesin fairly well known.he main constraint is a genetic reistance strategy that uses narow gentic base solution (such as single genes) that ignores the diversity of the pathogen and of the host.

peanut (groundnut) and cowpea.  foliar and soilborne fungal diseases, aflatoxin contamination, and seed composition/quality are important traits.  The variability in aflatoxin contamination, even within same genotype and environment, constrains selection for resistance.

Decentralized participatory breeding including farmers and value chain in the target environment!

Easy applical tools for resistance screening.

Improved understanding of plant microbe interaction and their utilization in plant breeding 

The progam was able to integrated farmer participatory variety selection approach in the preformance evaluation of advanced breeding lines. This helped in speeding up the release of best bet farmer preferred varieties and adoption. Besides, the program has moved from paper based to digital breeding process managment (trial design, data collection, analysis and storage) for enhanced efficiency

We used induced mutation breeding techniques (Gamma irradiation) in our breeding as a stratergy to enhance variation and improve genetic diversity. We are aiming at intergrating the conventional breeding techniques with the induced mutation breeding.

Tools other than directly selecting for the desired phenotype would be molecular markers linked to the trait. In beans we have been using markers now since the early 1990s to select for major disease resistance genes. Markers for quality and agronomic traits have not been as useful as agronomic traits are easy to score and require seasonal field selection - and variability in quaility traits over locations/ years have prevented their adoption.  New tools to indirectly measure quality traits such as NIR visual measures appear promising.

We have integrated molecular markers into breeding programs. Technological advances that reduced cost per data point, and better understanding of how to correct for tetraploid genetics was fundamental. Sequencing of the diploid ancestors of peanut has taken things to a different level.

We have integrated wild species derived allotetraploids to breeding programs. Good partnerships were crucial, and realistic expectations of the long time frame to get to improved peanut lines.

Also the routine use of lab-based detached leaf assays for disease resistance (for rust and late leaf spot), as a complement to field evaluations. This has improved the accuracy of phenotyping for these diseases.

Funding from the peanut industry has been fundamental for sucesses so far.

Critical tools are still selective phenotyping both in the field and greenhouse, but more recently the aid of specific molecular markers have been useful, but with limitations. In dry beans we have many succesful examples of use of molecular markers linked to disease resistance genes. However, most of these are related to monogenic traits (Mendelian/qualitative inheritance). There are very few succesful examples for multigenic/complex traits, which is where the real help is more needed. Even with better markers, genomic sequences, and many other gains in molecular biology, I still don't see this well addressed/applied in breeding programs.

Use of genomics is critical to accelerate breeding, understanding the diversity of the germplasm, and revealing key loci and alleles associated with domestication

Guatemala (beans): detailed genotyping of germplasm base to determine variation in the program that can assist parent selection; markers loosely linked to disease resistance genes, but a group of the markers are only genepool/market class specific.

Classical breeding and farmer participatory breeding

In our research program (using wild Arachis to introgress resistances into the peanut crop),  partnership with various breeding programs has been vital - for validation and utilization of resources. The use of genotyping platforms has sped up marker usage and MAS.

(i) Decentralizing breeding 5-6 relative small units comprising 1 scientist 1 technician and operating funds to cross and select consider local farmer / gender needs under an umbrella of a hub which fosters: population improvement (large scale recombination), standardized data management & analysis, testing & validation of innovations in applied breeding populations as well as meetings across units, knowledge exchange, & seed exchange across breeding units, (ii) accelerated breeding schemes replacing temporal variation of test environments by spatial variation of test environments  (more locations less years), (iii) moderate but critical consideration of new technologies / inovations for breeding as long as they are under development / validation in applied breeding populations following the paradigm that the best breeding program design depends on the working environment  

I think the most progress we made this year was the adoption of the Breeding Management System (BMS) as an important tool which will help us for developing a more efficient breeding program. In addition, we use an approach of MAS in the whole process of development of breeding lines and seed genetic purity control as well.

The principal tools that  I have susscessfully integrated into the breeding program are the creation of common bean differential cultivars to study the virulence diversity and evolution of the highly variable pathgens that cause rust, anthracnose (ANT), angular leaf spot (ALS) and halo blight.These differntial cultivar using Andean and Mesoamerican common bean not only essemble th genetic diversity of the common bean crop but also have been instrumental in the discovery that the virulence diversity of the rust, ANT, and ALS pathogens is a mirror imagine of the diveristy of the host. Like in the common bean, these pathogens also have Andean and Middle American strains (known as races).These studies also lead to the discovery that gnes for reistance from Andean Adean beans are very effective in the managemnet of race of these pathogen of Middle American origin. Similarly, Disease reistance genes of Middle American origin confervery effective resistance toAndean races f these pathogens. We have developed bean cultivars combining Andeanand Middle American disease genes for resistance.Under expereimental conditons these cultivars hve broad reistanceto rust to all known races of the rust Pathogen and under field conditions in Africa and the Americas. More recently, we began using bulk segregant analysis and hign thoughput genotypin with a SNP chips with >5,000 SNPS to discover DNA markers (SNPs, KASPs, SSRs) that are highly accuratein tagging rust and anthracnose disease resistance genes. One of these markers (for the Ur-3 rust resistance gene) is highly specifi and accurate and tags the gene even when the bean pant has are highly specific  other genes rust resistance genes closely linked to Ur-3. Thus the combination of phenotype based on the diversity of the bean crop and the pathogen and the integration of genomic tools has allowed us to acelerate the breeding program for reistance to highlyvariable pathogens of common bean and to make th strategy more effective and accurate., 

The breeding program in Malawi has mostly employed conventional breeding methods and participatory variety selections. Of recent, we are trying to use the breeding management system to plan our breeding program. 

Marker-assisted selection for relatively simply inherited traits has been integrated into our breeding program during the last decade.  Infrastructure and willingness to adopt new technologies led to success.

Limited amount of financial resources for breeding of minor crops and for organic and low input conditions

A) difficulty to obtain genetic material for pre-breeding from other organisations and genebanks

B) limited trials and integration of replicated on station and participatory on farm variety trials representative for given pedoclimatic condition and farming systems

C) exchange with other breeders on global level for minor crops

C: Our research follows problem identification by local farmers and also urban gardeners; building local capacity and finding funds to follow up on problems identified is often difficult.

Limited funding is the main constraint which has direct implication on human resources and expaning the scale of breeding activities.

A. Germplasm characterization - funding, facilities/protocols for phenotyping certain traits; restirictions on germplasm movement

B. Variety testing - funding to scale the testing (number of varieties, replications, locations etc), limited representative test sites in some countries, limited resources capacity of programs in some countries to handle multi-location testing 

At the moment, the major challenges are lack of policy documents to guide the breeding programm. There are no breeding stations, lack of breeders, limited man power to handle breeding activities and lack of funds. On the other hand, natural constraint such as erratic rainfall, heat and drought, insect pest outbreak and weeds are some of the major limitation.

The success of yield breeding in beans appears modest when compared to small grains, maize and soybean. The reasons for the disparity are numerous but focus largely on the financial investment in breeding research. The disparity in investment in breeding cereals compared to beans is huge as is the private sector investment in breeding maize or soybean. Most bean breeding programs are modestly funded and even public sector funding of basic research on beans is minimum. Other contributing factors are the nature of the seed product produced by beans. Beans are a nutrient dense food and the cost of producing that food source is greater for the plant than producing a lower grade carbohydrate food source. Yield gains in cereals have resulted from improvements in partitioning nutrients from the plant to the grain. Beans are a short season crop that already are relatively efficient in partitioning nutrients to the seed with values approaching 50% in most cultivars so future gains in the area will be limited. Most non-climbing beans mature in under 100 days and many mature in 70 days. Given the short growing season, the expectations to fix more carbon a/o nitrogen in this time period is again limiting when compared to soybean that takes 30 additional days to mature.  Bean breeders do not have the luxury to focus on a single seed type but must focus on a range of seed types that differ in quality and consumer traits. Gains made in one seed type are not directly transferable to another seed type, requiring breeders to run concurrent programs as opposed to breeding a single seed or grain type that most soybean or cereal breeders focus on. The final challenge rests with the environments where beans are produced.  In most countries beans are relegated to less favorable environments, prone to stress, limiting in nutrients, with growing seasons shortened by elevation or latitude. In this regard the yield gap looms large as yield gains made under the ideal conditions of experiment stations cannot be directly transferred to the low input fields of small holder farmers. Rectifying this disparity will be the biggest challenge for bean breeders in the future.

just answering C) for the moment. Germplasm exchange is a massive constraint, especially between countries. I believe it's a critical issue for food security. 

with advances in genetics/genomics, characterization has become much more straightforward, though data is often biased toward the elite cultivated material. Access to germplasm, without impeding agreements/MTAs, continue to affect what germplasm is characterized and utlized for improvment.

with advances in genetics/genomics, characterization has become much more straightforward, though data is often biased toward the elite cultivated material. Access to germplasm, without impeding agreements/MTAs, continue to affect what germplasm is characterized and utlized for improvment.

Characterization is much more straightforward for many of the crops we work with, but the access and/or MTAs attached to germplasm can prohibit characterization and/or use. The crops community should be much more forward thinking in the sharing of data for germplasm as rsources are limited.

Main constraint: Too many traits to blend in and too many market classes of beans, each one of them with their unique set of traits/requirements. Having too many types is both a blessing (diversity) and a nightmare (lack of focused effort).

Germplasm constraint: phenotyping/genotyping capabilities and in some cases access to germplasm

Variety testing constraint: Having enough multi-location field testing in your target region.

Overall: in comparison to cereals, horticultural crops, and other groups, grain legumes in general receive substantially less funding for research and development. Historically, we have given more importance to energy (calories) and high value, than to protein. Still grain legumes are expected to advance at the same rate as others, which it has been accomplished in some cases, but with much more slower/small gains over time. It is also imporatnt to note that yield gains have been more difficult in legumes because most of the times farmers will grow cereals in their good land and put the legumes in their poor/marginal soil.

Access to germplasm

Ability to conduct large scale phenotyping trials at multiple locations

Long term constraint 1: availability to the full suite of germplasm found in all of the bean programs in the world.  Restrictions that require tracking of alleles from that germplasm as it moves from program to program have to be much less burdening.  Long term constraint 2: a full characerization of the haplotypes in all breeding programs.  This knowledge can drive parental selection.  Long term constraint 3: a stable funding level that assured each year that is provided by local and international sources.  This level can always be augmented as new programs are designed and additional funds come available.  This will ensure that a base level of population development, screening, and selection is not disrupted.

a) germplasm characterization - lack of facilities (irrigation, coldroom)

b) Variety testing - lack of qualified personnel (agronomists...)

c) Others - lack of funding in order to get more people into the program and even acquire vehicles in order to reach more farmers