TRAVEL FUND REPORTS: The 4th International Legume Society conference, Granada, Spain, 18th – 22nd September 2023

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The 4^th International Legume Society conference

Granada, Spain

18^th – 22^nd September 2023

As someone working on root diseases of pea crops, I was presented with the perfect opportunity to attend The 4^th International Legume Society conference (ILS4). It is a hub for everyone interested in the agronomy, agricultural research and genetic improvement of grain and forage legumes and their worldwide utilisation. To make things more exciting, the 9^th Workshop of International Legume Root Disease (ILRD9), which highlights and promotes the most recent advances on legume root disease research for the scientific, breeder and stakeholder community, was held as a satellite meeting. Thanks to the generous support of the BSPP travel fund, I was able to participate in the conference.

The conference was kicked off with ILRD9. Looking at the workshop programme showed that a major focus of legume root disease research is root rot, specifically caused by the oomycete Aphanomyces euteiches, which was headlined by Marie-Laure Pilet-Nayel giving a great talk on the current progress on field diagnostics, large-scale phenotyping and the development of genomic resources, where the difficulty of breeding resistant varieties due to polygenic inheritance and linkage of undesirable traits like flower colour or late flowering was discussed. Nevertheless, progress in identifying the underlying genetic factors of partial resistance have reached the point where 7 major QTL have been identified. Among those, Ae-Ps4.5 and Ae-Ps7.6 have undergone fine-mapping using two advanced back-cross populations that reduced the mapping intervals to regions containing 50 and 12 genes, respectively. It was inspiring to hear about the 2019 release of commercial root rot tolerant varieties in France as well as work on genome assembly production as well as RNA-seq of NILs being in progress. The European research was further enhanced by the Canadian perspective on introgressing previously identified major Aphanomyces resistance QTL into elite cultivars being progressed into registration trials of a first cohort of pea lines presented by Tom Warkentin, and Syama Chatterton’s talk on the quantification of root rot in the soil, an important decision support system for farmers. The highlight of the entire conference was that I have been granted a talk to present my progress on working on another member of the root rot complex, Fusarium solani during which I received encouraging feedback to further pursue the relatively unexplored plant-pathogen interactions during pathogenic root colonisation through microscopic investigation.

A very fascinating break from root rot was provided by Diego Rubiales who summarised his lab’s work on the lesser-known root disease caused by parasitic broomrape over the last 20 years having led from the identification of wide-spectrum resistance to the registration of resistant pea breeding lines with superior agronomic traits. It was also discussed, how strigolactones play an important role in host specificity.

In my opinion, a particularly useful part of the workshop was given by open discussion session after each session which allowed us to digest the various information into a more holistic view of tackling root diseases. For example, some very important points on the lack of long crop rotation studies were found to be a big gap in the research undertaken so far.

The following 4 days of the main conference were covered by various scientific sessions of all aspects of legume research ranging from economic evaluation of legume-based cropping systems and value chains to nutritional aspects to genetic improvement and breeding strategies to name a few. These made evident the untapped potential of legumes in Europe as only 3 % of arable land in Europe is dedicated to legumes while not producing enough to sufficiently meet the growing demand. A SWOT analysis through the Legume Gap project presented by Christine Watson showed the need to improve drought resistance as well as higher and stable yield while highlighting the opportunity of adapting the cropping system in the face of rising fertiliser and imported protein prices. A particularly noteworthy talk about improving the nutritional aspects of legumes was given by Dae-Kyun Ro who created saponin-free elite pea cultivars. Utilising CRISPR/Cas9-enabled mutagenesis delivered through hairy-root transformation on β-amyrin synthase led to a 99.8% reduction of saponins, a class of off-flavour compounds creating a bitter taste.

A great talk on the evolutionary history of common bean was presented by Roberto Papa who explored the Mesoamerican and Andean origin of bean showing that primary and secondary domestications are associated with loss of photoperiod sensitivity. Particularly inspiring was the INCREASE citizen science experiment, which aims to understand the process of adaptation in Europe by providing seeds and guidance for 16,799 participants to grow various beans in their gardens.

This was just one of many encouraging examples showing how much emphasis is being put on including the wider non-scientific community into legume research. As it is tempting to solely focus on scientific questions, it is easy to lose track of stakeholders like breeders, farmers and the wider industry. It was therefore great to have this additional input during the sessions. In addition, it was noticeable that in the general legume field there was overwhelmingly positive attitude towards collaboration as there are so many hurdles to overcome that people are far more willing to exchange with others.

Aside from the scientific aspects, we had ample opportunity to attend social events including a welcome reception during which we ended up exploring the beautiful city of Granada with a very international selection of young scientists, a football tournament as well as a gala dinner with a breath-taking flamenco show. Combined with the scientific exchange and excellent opportunities to become part of the community, this has proved to be a very rewarding experience which will benefit me enormously in my future research for which I am incredibly grateful to the BSPP.

Nicolas Trenk

The John Innes Centre