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Book of Abstracts First Legume Society Conference 2013: A Legume Odyssey Novi Sad, Serbia, 9-11 May 2013
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Transgenic approaches to overcome challenges caused by biotic and abiotic stresses in
grain legumes
Fathi Hassan, Hans-Jörg Jacobsen
Institute for Plant Genetics (Section of Plant Biotechnology), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover,
Hannover, Germany
Grain legumes are globally important crops especially for developing countries as important
source of proteins and minerals. They are, however, affected by a number of biotic and abiotic
stresses such as drought, salinity, insects, viruses, fungi and bacteria which can reduce grain yields
dramatically up to 70%. Improving the legumes with all available techniques will serve the goal of
food security. As durable resistance genes are scarce or absent in the respective gene pools,
transgenic approaches appear to be necessary. Obviously, genetic engineering is one of the
powerful tools to overcome the barriers as any promising gene from any source can be selected
and transferred to obtain novel candidate lines to be included in breeding programs. Additionally,
genetic engineering gives the option to transfer multiple genes responsible for combined stresses
at once in a specific way by also controlling the respective expression levels. Examples will be
presented i.e. the use of bacterial genes in pea for fungal and insect resistance or a potato gene to
enhance drought tolerance in faba bean or combinations of different antifungal genes.
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