GRAIN legumes (FEAST Focus #18, November 2005, p.6)
Grain Legumes Integrated Project (GLIP) is a large multinational project with Australian participants of the European Commission’s FP6, striving to develop new strategies to enhance the use of grain legume crops in Europe and beyond
Grain legumes such as peas, chickpeas, beans and lupins play a significant role in agriculture because of their value as an important source of vegetable protein for humans and animals alike and their beneficial impact on the environment. However, the use of these crops in European farming systems is relatively limited compared with the rest of the world because of problems with nutrition, disease, drought and plant morphology.
The story started in the years 1999-2000 when Prof. Richard Oliver from Murdoch University and Dr Karam Singh from CSIRO-Plant Industry established a Medicago truncatula research collaboration. In recent years this legume species has emerged as the “model species” for legume research. They were specifically interested in the genetics of resistance to fungal diseases and insect pests. Because the major legume grain crops in Australia contribute $AU500million/p.a. to the Australian economy, agencies like the GRDC support their work. Following the First Australian Medicago truncatula Conference in Perth (2002), they were invited to participate in the GLIP proposal by members of the nascent European Consortium, who had attended the meeting and were playing key roles in planning the GLIP application. Oliver and Singh’s specific leading expertise in the genetics of resistance to fungal diseases and insect pests of legumes, and their research work based on Medicago were a major incentive that lead to the invitation to join the partnership.
The principle objective of the IP is to mobilise and integrate the European research effort on grain legumes to address the major agricultural constraints affecting the production of legume crops in Europe. Emphasis is placed on using state-of-the-art methodologies including genomics, genetics and bioinformatics.
This project follows a truly integrated approach to addressing the problems of growing grain legumes. GLIP features a wide range of activities as listed in the article about IPs on p. 11. A large programme of pure and applied agricultural research is taking place. It ranges from quantifying the impact of grain legumes on the environment and their use in animal feed, to studying the fundamental genetic mechanisms that govern the growth and development of grain legumes and their responses to abiotic and biotic stress.
An important part of the dissemination effort involves the formation of a technology transfer platform to facilitate interactions between researchers and end-users active in grain legumes and to disseminate knowledge and products developed from the research programme.
A training fund to sustain grain legumes research by providing fellowships to individual scientists and to support a programme of short courses & workshops.
Currently, 18 countries are involved in the Grain Legumes Integrated Project and the Australian activities are well integrated through collaborations with a number of EU groups including researchers in Toulouse, Montpellier, Bielefeld, Norwich and Cordoba.
Australian Participation
The specific input of Oliver and Singh in the project is mainly concerned with the analysis and genetic dissection of biotic stress responses. It is coordinated through Work Package 4.2. The starting point is to analyse fungal and insect interactions with the model plant Medicago. The network enables them to share expertise with other teams addressing crop productivity in general. They have used genomic tools like the GLIP expression profiling platform at Bielefeld to help with their research. They also contribute to comparative genetic mapping projects coordinated by GLIP. Furthermore Murdoch and CSIRO provide an important training component to the whole project.
In terms of funding they received conflicting advice about whether they were eligible for EU funding but were ultimately ruled ineligible. However, their collaborative work is financed from Australian sources; they received a grant of $AU630,000 from the DEST’s ISL. This funding allowed the incorporation of Dr Ram Nair of SARDI into the project. He curates the world’s largest collection of Medicago. Thus an added benefit for the GLIP coordinators was the opportunity to coordinate their activities with that of the Australia collection.
As the only non-EU group in GLIP, the DEST funds are essential for them to take a significant role in this project and enable the team to access European resources during shorts visits, strengthen their work on fungal and insect induced stress genes, and profitably exchange biomaterial including crop strains, for the first two years of GLIP.
Outcomes
For the Australian partners the proximate benefits stemming from the collaboration are access to the large genomic resources made available in Europe and an exchange of visitors and postgraduate students. Dr Singh sees working together on long term exchanges as a clear advantage and one he thinks will be important when “we think about how to sustain our activities post-GLIP”. Results from their research may arise over the next 5 to 10 years and will be exploited by other research groups, plant breeders and biotechnologists. To facilitate the uptake of this research, the Australian groups are likely to link with the Technology Transfer Programme of GLIP.
Acknowledgement Richard Oliver and Karam Singh
