The PeaMUST project: defining ideotypes for the pea crop development

Pea is the most widely cultivated grain legume crop in Europe. In the French research project PeaMUST, a large public and private sector partnership has been set up to undertake complementary strategies towards the development of high and stable yielding cultivars. These different strategies will contribute to the definition of a pea ideotype based on both a priori and a posteriori approaches. On the one hand, genomic selection will identify interesting genotypes which may display new phenotypic ideotypes. On the other hand, marker-assisted selection will enable cumulating resistance for a given or different stresses to reach more durably stable phenotypes. Moreover, mutations identified in candidate genes controlling aerial and root architecture will be tested for their effects on stress tolerance.