The economics of farming naturally put “high yield” at the top of every plant breeders list, but something like yield is interwoven with a number of other factors. Just to allow a plant to maintain its intrinsic yield potential you have to develop it to be able to compete with weeds, stand well and have some type of herbicide and disease resistance. That is the complex situation that underscores the current efforts in field peas.
Dr Tom Warkentin is with the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. He specializes in field pea and knows all about how the complex elements must be balanced in breeding new traits into field peas. I spoke to Tom about those efforts, the partnerships developed around the world to help in them and some of the new tools on the way to speed up the process.
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