Breeding European Legumes for Increased Sustainability

Project Information

BELIS

Grant agreement ID: 101081878

DOI

10.3030/101081878

EC signature date 2 May 2023

Start date 1 October 2023

End date 30 September 2028

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 7 582 527,20

EU contribution

€ 7 077 914,74

Coordinated by

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BELIS (Breeding European Legumes for Increased Sustainability)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Less than optimal breeding efforts have so far been invested by public and private breeders for legume species.
This hampers the economic sustainability of legume-based farming systems, and their added value remains largely underexploited as stated in numerous EU reports.
In this context, improved methodologies but also governance of legume breeding sector could improve its competitiveness. The delivery of genetic progress, once obtained by breeders, also requires adequate public policies for variety registration and efficient dissemination of information to extension services, feed and food industries and farmers.
In this context, Belis has three objectives:
1. To develop tools and methodologies for cost-effective breeding programmes and deliver proofs of concept, with and for breeders.
2. To facilitate the economic regulatory environment variety registration, variety recommendation and business models
3. To implement an efficient, ambitious and durable transfer of innovation through the BELIS platform that includes a network of breeders and actors from scientific research, extension services and seed, food and feed industries, as well as a training portfolio.
The project focuses on seven forage crops and seven grain crop that are currently grown to produce feed (for ruminants – cattle, sheep, goat and monogastric animals – pig, poultry), food (as is or after processing) or to deliver ecosystem services.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The experimental work has started, with multisite, multi-partner organisation when needed, and with plant material and methodology sharing. Several new protocols for phenotyping have been improved or transferred from one species to another.
First Quantitative trait locus (QTL) studies have been produced. The collection of available protocols for phenotyping but also variety testing in registration procedures is growing. Trait ontologies and database structures are established to handle data produced in the project. For grain legume genotyping, information on available markers has been gathered and a cost-effective multispecies genotyping tool is under construction, to be shared among Belis partners and other partners beyond Belis. The economic environment of legume breeding is under study, with analyses of the markets but also interviews conducted in case-studies and living labs.
Most of the datasets are not completed yet to produced fully exploitable results, these will come after 2 or 3 years of experimental work, conducted in field or controlled conditions.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The first new protocols can already be used in breeding programmes or internally in the project. The same is true for QTL or genes identified so far. These include their implementation in Proof of Concept breeding activities that aim at testing renewed breeding methods. Comparison of registration protocols in European countries highlights common traits of interest but also contrasted ones. The market analyses already conducted for grain legumes illustrate the contribution of each EU country to the production but also the massive imports requested to meet feed and food needs.