Iowa Plant Breeders Target Mung Beans
AMES - Jul 12/22 - SNS -- Plant breeders at Iowa State University are hoping to develop new varieties of mung beans suited for U.S. midwest growing conditions and the plant-based protein market.
Led by Arti Singh, Iowa State assistant professor of agronomy, The team is being funded through a grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture to begin the project focused on mung bean breeding for plant-based protein in superior agronomic variety.
Additional Iowa State researchers on the project include Mark Licht, associate professor and cropping systems agronomist; Daren Mueller, assistant professor of plant pathology; Matthew OâNeal, assistant professor of entomology; and Buddhi Lamsal, professor, food science and human nutrition. Steven Cannon, a geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, is a collaborating member.
External partners include the University of Tennessee and the University of Vermont, providing the team necessary expertise to undertake the project. In addition to these partnerships, Singh has identified areas for research pursuits and current market demands through detailed discussions with farmers and food processing companies over the past several years.
Farmers and food processors in California, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas and Vermont support the project. Farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma have expressed their intent to help grow test plots for the project as well.
The plant breeding team will focus on developing varieties with increased protein content by leveraging existing and new crosses developed by Singh. The larger team will evaluate crop management practices and contribute to specific traits that would be helpful, such as diseases, insect-pest, and water stress tolerance, and food related traits.
"Mung beans are already fairly drought tolerant,"" Singh said. "But there are so many possibilities to explore with breeding efforts."
The team will spend the next three years combing through data from 500 different lines of mung bean looking at seed yield, days to maturity, growth habit and nutritional traits like protein, amino acid, mineral content and fiber content. Theyâll map the genetic makeup of diverse genotypes and develop markers for selecting various traits that can be a valuable community resource.
Singh hopes that this project will lay the groundwork for developing supply chains and improving infrastructure to help bolster the growing plant-based protein market in the United States. It will also provide additional crop option in the crop rotation, and one that is very versatile and resilient.
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