The maintenance of competitiveness and the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture requires that it constantly adapt to new challenges, among which those derived from climate change and agri-food quality are becoming increasingly important. Climate change is generating a series of environmental stresses that make it necessary to develop new adapted varieties. In the final acceptance of the product, where the consumer has the last word, organoleptic and nutritional quality attributes are increasingly considered. The snap bean is one of the vegetable crops that in Spain has been increasing its price, higher than that from third countries. In recent years, although fresh consumption is the one that maintains the highest percentage, the part destined for industry due to the pull of frozen products is increasing exponentially. Producers and consumers demand new variety specialties that combine productivity and commercial quality of their fruits, that promote more sustainable farming systems, with good quality properties, and that allow the generation of new food products.
The +BEAN project addresses, with a coordinated and properly management program (WORK PACKAGE 1), the search for solutions to these challenges by adopting an innovative approach that integrates productivity, resistance to biotic stresses, and organoleptic and nutritional quality. The project will begin with the Identification of molecular markers to efficiently perform pathogen resistance genotyping selection in common bean breeding (WORK PACKAGE 2). Following this purpose, we develop new common bean varieties (lines) with high fruit quality characteristics and with increase resilience for sustainable cropping systems and food security (WORK PACKAGE 3). Finally, we will improve the adaptation of the new bean varieties to different environmental conditions, and the suitability for frozen process / market (WORK PACKAGE 4). As a counterpart, a techno-economic study will be carried out on the demands of producers and consumers, with the design of new formulations of frozen meals for human nutrition based on nutritious elite varieties, together with the design of valorization strategies of the new varieties and frozen foods at the productive, industrial and consumer level (WORK PACKAGE 5).
The innovative aspects of the project are, in a first place, the enhancement of the agrodiversity with new common bean varieties with potential in the market of fresh consumption specialties, increasing the profitability of cultivation due to high productivity under sustainability cropping systems by incorporating disease resistance genes; secondly, the use of innovative genomic tools and technologies, based on knowledge of the bean genome; and third enhancing the consumer opportunities due to the improvement the organoleptic and nutritional characteristics of varieties and develop of new frozen products.
The achievement of the proposed objectives will be the result of a public-private collaboration between members that have recognized technical capacity and extensive experience, of a multidisciplinary nature, that cover all the phases of the agri-food chain, and of demonstrated capacity for innovation and response to market.
+BEAN · IMPROVING COMMON BEAN VARIETIES THROUGH KNOWLEGDE-DRIVEN BREEDING STRATEGIES TO DIVERSIFY AND ENCOURAGE THE AGRI-FOOD SECTOR
