What's new in grain legume breeding?
Breeders are releasing new varieties regularly and these have improved characteristics. Recently there have been some major advances:
>  better standing ability for peas at harvest time, which means that new cultivars can grow in almost any type of soil;
>  frost resistance in winter pea, winter faba bean and winter white lupin;
>  improved yield potential and low alkaloids content in blue lupin;
>  seed quality of faba bean (free from antinutritional factors).

Progress and prospects for breeding new cultivars
by Frédéric Muel (UNIP, Paris, France)

Quite a large number of plant breeding companies are still working on grain legume species in different regions of Europe. Most are SMEs, with a small but dynamic breeding programmes. There are about 30 breeding programmes for pea and 18 for faba bean, and the market in seed production is shared between 10 companies for both crops. There are only five soyabean breeders in Europe mainly because of the limited land suitable for soyabean production, and the small number of breeding programmes on chickpea and lentil are mainly undertaken by public research institutes in southern Europe.
Breeding programmes on grain legumes are very recent, the oldest ones started only at the end of the 1970s. Nevertheless, the progress during the last 10 years, for example, lodging resistance in pea or nutritional value in faba bean, achieved by genetic improvement has been very important. Winter varieties are very promising in pea, white lupin and faba bean, with good frost resistance that allows early sowing in autumn and a better harvesting time in summer, especially in northern Europe. Although they may need to be more resistant to diseases, winter varieties will ensure more stable yields for producers.
These breeding programmes are expensive, but new varieties will come onto the market in the next five years. The current challenge is to maintain the breeding efforts in all the grain legumes even though the market is declining. One method of achieving this goal is to increase cooperation among plant breeders to strengthen R&D and to share and transfer innovative technologies for greater and more rapid application.
A first example of existing cooperation concerns a group of most of pea and faba bean breeders in France, called GSP, that set up a network especially to speed up the introduction of resistance against Aphanomyces euteiches in pea cultivars. The second is the European project EUFABA gathering most of the breeding companies in faba bean to design new breeding tools (molecular markers) and to define common goals and objectives to satisfy the integrated chain requirements (yield stability for producers, quality for end-users).  The latest example is the new organisation, the Grain Legumes Technology Transfer Platform (GL-TTP), initiated within the Grain Legumes Integrated Project (GLIP). The GL-TTP is an international platform created to transfer knowledge and state-of-the-art technologies between research and industry in order to boost the production of grain legumes at reduced cost. The top priority of the GL-TTP is to facilitate and expedite grain legume breeding programmes through the use of molecular markers.

These cooperative programmes are helping plant breeders to remain active in grain legumes despite the fact that the research funding is decreasing due to the reduction of certified seeds sales. National programmes and EU support are very helpful to accompany the breeding efforts of such minor crops in Europe, and the confidence in such programmes will depend mainly on an increase in grain legume crop production in the next few years. Already the range of available grain legume varieties can meet the need for diversification in the different European cropping systems.