The Institute of Biological and Environmental Research at Aberystwyth University (ABER) is a world leader in applying ‘omic’ tools to the breeding of oats, pulses, miscanthus and forages including red and white clover. ABER research provides the genetic, physiological and agronomic knowledge that underpinning its own breeding programmes which were established in 1919. These successful commercial breeding programmes include a wide range of legume species with over 50% of the winter bean market dominated by varieties bred at ABER for example. Our pre-breeding activities in peas include the incorporation of novel traits to improve nutritional quality. We host a modern genebank with some 35,00 accessions of forage legumes, grasses, oats and related species. Improved genomic approaches have enabled novel sources of genetic variation to be incorporated into the breeding programmes. ABER has a strong record in transferring and disseminating information from these projects to the wider industry. ABER also hosts the National Plant Phenomics Centre (NPPC) which contains State-of-the-art non-destructive image based phenotyping platforms at a range of scales to monitor numerous aspects of plant growth, development and response to biotic and abiotic stress as well as micro CT scanning for a wide range of plant and tissue types. This complements existing greenhouse facilities, field laboratories and farm facilities for field-based phenotyping.

Role in the Legume Generation project

Phenotyping gentic diversity populations of peas, clover and lupins in field and phenomics facilities along with associated data analysis to develop advanced breeding tools.