EAGLE: Enhanced Analytical and Genetics Tools for Improving UK Food Legumes

Despite providing an excellent source of high-quality protein and featuring as important break-crops in arable cropping rotations improving sustainability, UK-grown pulses (dry pea and faba bean) are under-utilised for human consumption. Historic under-investment in pulse crop breeding and scientific R&D has, until recently, limited scope for improving knowledge and for developing new, better-adapted cultivars. However, the rapid recent growth in plant-based foods and ingredients has led to greater demand for pulses in Western diets aiming to reduce meat and dairy consumption. The food production sector is currently reliant on imported grains such as soya, lentil, and chickpea, even though UK is one of the greatest producers of pulses in Europe. EAGLE will help to improve access to established collections of diverse germplasm, advanced breeding methodologies and analytical testing to characterise nutritional quality could have a profound effect on enhancing researcher's and the plant breeding industry's abilities to develop new resilient, nutritious UK-grown pulse varieties and develop greater understanding of how key traits can be manipulated to benefit society and the environment. This could be a extremely useful in helping to reduce the reliance on imported pulses like soya.

The new resources will provide access to genetically and phenotypically characterised GWAS panels and improved transformation and gene-editing capability for pea and faba bean. This will facilitate the fundamental characterisation of genes contributing to nutritional composition, the manipulation of important agronomic and compositional traits, and expedite the breeding of new improved conventional and gene-edited pulse varieties. Re-sequencing and gene-alignment data will be hosted in the European Variation Archive, enabling researchers and stakeholders to quickly access information through standard graphical interfaces without the need for extensive bioinformatics training. Advanced analytical testing methods will be established to provide tools for characterising natural diversity and optimising methods to support industry. The project will focus strongly on stakeholder engagement across various research sectors to ensure the resources can be promoted effectively and the greatest number of end-users can access the project outputs to begin to exploit them. A scientific advisory board will be elected to oversee progress on an annual basis, whilst an academic stakeholder forum will be organised to provide a platform to exchange knowledge and promote exploitation of the new services and resources. Activities will be organised into five integrated work packages supporting the development of germplasm, improved breeding technologies, agronomic and physiological characterisation, analytical testing for nutrients and anti-nutritional components, and exploitation of the resources with key academic stakeholders.