Legume Generation Report 3

Peas belong to the species Pisum sativum and are a widely cultivated crop with diverse types adapted for different uses, for instance, peas grown for fresh consumption include garden peas, snap peas and snow peas while peas grown for their dry seeds include field peas, marrowfat peas, and forage peas. In the pea IC, we will mainly focus on genetic improvement of dry peas as they hold greater commercial importance because of their diverse applications in processing industries, ease of scalabilit and consistent market demand.

Pea is a cool-season legume crop mainly cultivated in temperate region for human consumption and feed livestock. It is grown either for its mature, dry seeds (combining peas) for use in food, feed, and processing industries or harvested as immature seeds for fresh vegetable consumption or freezing (vining peas). Consequently, pea breeding efforts must address diverse challenges, which include improving agronomic traits and seed quality to enhance resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses. It is important that efforts to boost the breeding of pea draw on integrating advanced genomic, phenomic and breeding tools to support a range of breeding strategies tailored to specific pea types. This balance between underpinning support and specific targeting ensure sustainable innovations that meet market demands and future agricultural challenges.

Despite it being an important legume crop, pea cultivation has declined in Europe. However, there is a remarkable increase in pea production in Canada facilitated by recent investment in its breeding. In PIC, our strategy is to support on public-private pea breeding efforts to address the challenges faced by the crop to meet the needs of growers and producers.