Faba bean genetics and crop growth models – progress to date and opportunities for integration

Background

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is a globally adapted protein crop with a high yield potential and efficient nitrogen fixation. A decade ago, it was an orphan crop with limited genetic and genomic resources and little knowledge was available on the genetic basis of agronomic traits. Over the past few years, rapid progress has been made in genetic mapping and genomic prediction. A major remaining question is how to improve the understanding of associations between genes and environmental factors, including water and nutrient uptake and availability.

Scope

We review recent progress in faba bean research, including the development of reference genome sequences and genotyping approaches, which has facilitated high-resolution genetic mapping. We anchor QTL from different studies to the same reference genome to provide a current overview of faba bean traits and associated QTL, highlighting robust signals supported by multiple lines of evidence. We then consider the state of the art in faba bean crop growth models (CGMs) and how they could inform future crop improvement in combination with genetic models.

Conclusion

Genetic studies based on high-resolution genotype information and multi-location field trials are now providing a basis for genetic dissection of faba bean genotype by environment interactions and for predicting the performance of specific genotypes in unseen environments. Integration of process-based CGMs with genetic modelling could represent an important next step by capturing genotype-specific growth dynamics but await field trial data suited for supporting development of improved faba bean CGMs.