ICARDA annual report 2004

A progressive farmer in Betahani village in western Terai in Nepal grew ILL 7723 lentil
in his field, which is good for zero tillage conditions and is awaiting release.
ILL 6829 and ILL 7982 have been
adopted by farmers in the mid-hills
region, where lentil was not widely
grown previously. As a result,
lentil has now become a major
source of dietary protein in this
area. The national program has also
identified sources of resistance to
various stresses, and accessions
with valuable morphological and
phenological variability, which
have been conserved in the national
genebank for future use.
ICARDA is working with
NARC and the Australian Center
for Legumes in Mediterranean
Agriculture (CLIMA), on an
Australian Center for International
Agricultural Research (ACIAR)funded
project, to develop new
production technologies. Priming
lentil seeds before sowing by
immersing them in water for 12
hours and then air-drying them for
2 hours, improved plant establishment,
reduced emergence times,
and increased seed yield by around
40%. Researchers showed that the
optimum sowing time for lentil
grown as a relay crop with rice is
10-20 days before the rice harvest,
in lowland rainfed conditions. The
recommended sowing rate is 40-50
kg seed/ha, depending on soil
moisture levels. Farmers have
already adopted these technologies
and are now achieving higher
yields.
ICARDA is working with other
organizations to multiply seed of
promising varieties for dissemination
to farmers. The Center is also
using participatory approaches to
improve technology development
and dissemination, in collaboration
with NGOs such as the Forum for
Rural Welfare and Agricultural
Reform for Development (FOR-
WARD) and Local Initiatives for
Biodiversity Research and
Development (LI-BIRD).
These efforts have significantly
improved the incomes of smallscale
farmers, and made more lentil
available for everyday consumption,
providing nutritional security
for the country’s poor. They have
also benefited agroindustries,
traders, exporters, and the country’s
economy as a whole. Since
1996, new production technologies
and the adoption of improved varieties
has increased production by a
total of 131,701 tonnes—worth
around US$ 45 million.
Nepal has also recently been
included in an ICARDA-led program
which aims to develop lentil
cultivars high in micronutrients.
This is part of the CGIAR’s Systemwide
Harvest Plus Challenge
Program.
Theme 1
New QTLs mapped for
winter-hardiness in lentil
Lentil production in CWANA’s
cold areas could be greatly
increased by planting in fall or winter
rather than in spring, the traditional
planting season, as crops
would benefit from low evapotranspiration
rates and a longer growing
season. International and
national improvement programs
are, therefore, focusing on developing
winter-hardy lentil varieties.
Past research indicates that sufficient
winter-hardiness is available
in ICARDA-conserved germplasm.
However, identifying and transferring
winter-hardiness genes is a
difficult and slow process because
field screening can be unpredictable.
Improving winter-hardiness
on the basis of lentil phenotype
is also difficult, because the
trait is complex and strongly affected
by environmental factors, such
as freeze-thaw cycles, waterlogging,
ice encasement, diseases, and
temperature. ICARDA is overcoming
these problems using molecular
markers and a marker-assisted
selection program.
Genetic studies on winter-hardiness
using recombinant inbred lines
(RILs) have indicated that several
genes control the trait. Therefore, as
part of a USAID-funded program,
researchers from ICARDA,
Washington State University, USA,
and the Central Research Institute
for Field Crops, Ankara, Turkey,
collaborated to identify and locate
the quantitative trait loci (QTLs)
which confer winter-hardiness, and
the molecular markers that identify
them. This involved an inheritance
study which used a RIL population
(WA8649090/Precoz) developed
from a winter-hardy × non-hardy
cross.
In total, 106 RILs were evaluated
for winter hardiness in the field
at Haymana and Sivas, Turkey, and
ICARDA Annual Report 2004
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