WESTERN PRODUCER — The risk that anthracnose poses to lentils continues to be high priority for the pulse sector.
Addressing this pulse disease is of particular importance among researchers, crop specialists and agronomists because disease management methods are limited.
Recommendations include smart crop rotations, reduced seeding rates and fungicide treatments. However, the pathogen that causes anthracnose, Colletotrichum lentis, is increasingly resistant to Group 11 fungicides.
This growing fungicide resistance is a key motivator as the government and industry support Sabine Banniza’s work in developing an anthracnose resistant lentil variety.
Banniza is the Ministry of Agriculture Strategic Research Program Chair in Pulse Crop Pathology and a professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre.
She has been working on anthracnose for nearly her entire career, beginning with gaining an understanding of the pathogen and its interactions with the plant and moving to resistance breeding in the last 10 years.
The research has determined that resistance can only be found in wild lentils, mostly because of the greater diversity. In comparison, the cultivated species have been bred for thousands of years with targeted goals such as uniformity, seed size and plant growth habits, which has caused a very narrow genetic base.
“Ten, 15 years ago, here in the breeding program, they started to screen wild relatives of lentil … to see whether there are high levels of resistance to this virulent Race 0 in the wild relatives,” Banniza said.
“And they did find it, but unfortunately they only found it in a fairly distantly related species.”
Cultivated lentils are susceptible to both races of the anthracnose pathogen, Race 1 and Race 0, but only have resistance to Race 1.
“Way back in the early 2000s, the two races co-existed,” Banniza said.
“They were probably almost at equal frequency. But then, because we did develop varieties that had good Race 1 resistance, they couldn’t infect the lentil plants very well anymore, whereas the Race 0 isolates could.”
This advancement caused a shift in infection rates and resulted in where lentils are today, relying on crop rotations and fungicide because the crop has no resistance to Race 0.
However, with the wild relative solution comes a problem: the distance of relationship between the two species causes genetic incompatibility when breeding. The chances of a successful cross are one in 100.
“The immature seed will be aborted, so just starts developing, and then it basically turns yellow and drops off,” she said.
“And so, what you have to do is you have to go through an embryo rescue process and harvest that very immature seed and then try to regenerate it into a plant through tissue culture.”
Sometimes there are successes, such as what happened around 10 years ago when a cross was reached with the older lentil variety, Eston. The offspring was used in the breeding program, but it brought with it some of the undesirable traits of the wild lentils — pods that shatter easily, shorter and flatter plants that pose a challenge when harvesting, small seed size, varying seed colours and different growth habits.
“Inadvertently, sometimes you throw out offspring that, yes, had the resistance gene, but was also horrible at shattering,” Banniza said.
“And now, because we have a much better understanding of the genome and genes, we can use molecular tools to be much more strategic in selecting the right offspring with which to continue the breeding process.”
The molecular tools and technology that are available for the variety development project is a game changer. It’s enabled a greater understanding of genetic markers and will allow for the identification of desired traits in selected plants and the offspring.
It took more than 10 years to develop the tech for their use and was largely developed by a lentil geneticist on the team, Kirstin Bett.
“It’s like all of a sudden having a completely new toolbox,” Banniza said.
“But just generating the toolbox took a long time, and so now, we’re in a situation where we can use and apply the tools to make that selection.”
In preparation for its use, Banniza has done plenty of research on wild lentils to identify the molecular markers of the traits they’re seeking to include in the hybrid, such as anthracnose resistance.
They’re currently at the point of developing their first successful hybrid, and once it’s created, they’ll be able to grow up to six generations per year and quickly advance.
However, the stumbling block right now is developing the wild-cultivated hybrid.
Banniza said they’re heavily relying on trial and error during the process because there aren’t many other researchers attempting work such as this and there isn’t much information in the scientific literature for reference.
“It’s not a huge community who has worked on interspecies hybrids in lentils, and in particular, not between the cultivated species and this wild species,” she said.
“And so, you just try out different things and try to find a method that works best for you.”
The process they’ve used is known as “backcrossing,” which involves delicate, detail-oriented work because lentil flowers are quite small and easily damaged.
To begin the process, they use a wild plant as the male and a cultivated plant as the female. To ensure they don’t self pollinate, the pollen is snipped off the cultivated species very carefully to not damage it. The pollen is then taken from the wild plant to pollinate the cultivated plant.
If pollination is successful, a small pod will develop.
“We have to take that pod,” Banniza said.
“Maybe a week or so after it started developing, we put that tiny, tiny little ovule in the pod into tissue culture and then try to make that little, little green blob develop into a bigger blob and eventually into a shoot and into some roots.”
The first cross is the F1 hybrid, which is then used to pollinate the cultivated female again to “enrich the next generation” with the desired genes of the cultivated species.
Lentil plants have flower pods that are extremely small, and recquire delicate removal when being used for the breeding process. | Photo by Sabine Banniza
This is where the molecular technology steps in, so the team can determine whether the cross contains the disease resistance. Using the molecular trait markers, they can detect which seeds are developing with the “wild” resistance as well as telling the “good genes” from the cultivated female.
“This process is repeated two or three times and then we hope to have something that looks and behaves like a cultivated lentil but has the wild resistance to anthracnose.”
The lines are then allowed to self-pollinate for a couple of generations so that the traits become more “fixed,” or in technical terms, “more homozygous.”
Banniza estimates that an anthracnose resistant lentil variety will be market available in approximately 10 years.
“Plus/minus one year, I think we’re still in that frame.”
Variance is always possible with the new methods and technologies that become available.
This timeline is based on a few considerations, but the main one is that it’s entirely conventional breeding practices, so it can take a while. As well, it’s not just based on developing the hybrid but also consequential offspring success, the field research and registration process.
To get to the point of co-op and field trials within plant breeding programs, a variety bred for five to six generations is required, which means a few rounds of Banniza’s process must occur first.
Additionally, in this case, all breeding is performed under controlled conditions.
“Under control conditions, you can’t select for yield, you can’t select for many of the more economic traits you have to incorporate in your varieties,” Banniza said.
“So yes, we can do that (disease testing) in the greenhouse, but we also have to do a lot of field research, and that’s why it’s a long time to do that.”
However, the hope of 10 or so years is high, and it’s a lot sooner than the 20 years she’s spent working on the research.
About the author
Reporter
Janelle Rudolph is a Glacier FarmMedia Reporter based in Rosthern, Sask. Janelle Rudolph's love of writing and information, and curiosity in worldly goings-ons is what led her to pursue her Bachelor of Communication and Digital Journalism from Thompson Rivers University, which she earned in 2024. After graduating, she immediately dove headfirst into her journalism career with Glacier FarmMedia. She grew up on a small cattle farm near Rosthern, Sask. which has influenced her reporting interests of livestock, local ag, and agriculture policy. In Janelle’s free time she can be found reading with a coffee in hand, wandering thrift and antique stores or spending time with friends and family.
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