Breeding for stress resistance in legumes

Abstract

Susceptibility to biotic and abiotic stresses is the common situation for most legume crops, representing a major limitation for legume cultivation. Relative prevalence and importance of the various diseases and stresses in each crop varies with the agroecological conditions, but the sad fact is that in each situation we face challenging problems to which little resistance and alternative control methods are available. Resistance breeding is a priority in most programs yielding significant achievements. However, progressis still slow due to the still relatively low investment on biotechnology on legume crops, but also, and main ly because of the insufficient knowledge on the plant/stress interactions and in most cases on the biology of the causal agents, with poor understanding on host specialization, existence of races and at times even on the identity of the causal agents. A number of cases studied will be presented in this talk, with a special focus on those that are specific of the Mediterranean Basin. Some results achieved so far on identification and characterization of resistance against major fungal diseases, insect pests, parasitic weeds and drought will be presented and discussed.