here - First Legume Society Conference (LSC1)

Book of Abstracts First Legume Society Conference 2013: A Legume Odyssey Novi Sad, Serbia, 9-11 May 2013
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KEYNOTE LECTURE
Breeding for stress resistance in legumes
Diego Rubiales 1 , E. Barilli 1 , N. Rispail 1 , E. Prats 1 , M. Fernández-Aparicio 2 , M.A. Castillejo 3 , R.
Iglesias-García 4 , S. Fondevilla 5
1
Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, CSIC, Córdoba, Spain
2
Virginia Tech Univ., Blacksburg, USA
3
Univ. Vienna, Austria
4
Univ. Essex, UK
5
Univ. Frankfurt, Germany
Susceptibility to biotic and abiotic stresses is the common situation for most legume crops,
representing a major limitation for legume cultivation. Relative prevalence and importance of the
various diseases and stresses in each crop varies with the agroecological conditions, but the sad
fact is that in each situation we face challenging problems to which little resistance and alternative
control methods are available. Resistance breeding is a priority in most programs yielding
significant achievements. However, progressis still slow due to the still relatively low investment
on biotechnology on legume crops, but also, and mainly because of the insufficient knowledge on
the plant/stress interactions and in most cases on the biology of the causal agents, with poor
understanding on host specialization, existence of races and at times even on the identity of the
causal agents. A number of cases studied will be presented in this talk, with a special focus on those
that are specific of the Mediterranean Basin. Some results achieved so far on identification and
characterization of resistance against major fungal diseases, insect pests, parasitic weeds and
drought will be presented and discussed.
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