Development and evaluation of organic heterogeneous material and variety mixtures in spring grain peas with special consideration of foot and root diseases, processing quality characteristics and their suitability for intercropping cultivation – LfL (LegumeMix)

The overall objective of the project is to establish a basis for the development of spring pea cultivars suitable for organic agriculture, taking into consideration the recently extended legal possibilities to use genetic diversity within the framework of the new European regulation on organic farming (2018/848/EU). The aim is to increase the buffer capacity (resilience) to biotic and abiotic stresses through increased genetic diversity via the development of organic heterogeneous material (OHM) as defined in the new EU Organic Regulation as well as variety mixtures. Studies prove the positive yield effects of increased diversity: In grain peas, significantly higher positive yield effects could be realized through increased morphological diversity in mixtures of genotypes with different leaf morphology than are known, for example, for cereal variety mixtures. However, there are still considerable gaps in our knowledge of the development of complex variety mixtures or of OHM in grain pea, which will be closed in the present project. In the first two work packages, fundamental questions on breeding methodology and selection criteria for the development of OHM and variety mixtures will be investigated. In further work packages, resistance and tolerance properties of different pea genotypes to root diseases will be studied as well as quality and processing characteristics, the latter especially in the area of use for human consumption. In order to identify genotypes (including OHM and mixtures) with suitability for this cropping system, all trials will be set up in a mixture with cereals, and in some cases also in pure stand for comparison. The strategies of increasing resilience through intra- and interspecific diversity are thus combined in this project.