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Press release.
09/11/2007
Results of the European Grain Legumes Integrated Project (GLIP)
The initial findings of the European Grain Legumes Integrated Project (GLIP) were presented at a conference held in Lisbon from 12 to 16 November 2007. Launched in 2004 to develop new strategies in promoting the cultivation of legumes in Europe, as well as their use in animal feed, GLIP brings together 67 laboratories from 25 countries as part of the 6th framework programme in research and development, including 14 INRA laboratories located in the research centres of Dijon, Montpellier, Nantes, Rennes, Toulouse and Versailles. Legumes are essential in the development of sustainable, environmentally-sound agriculture, but they remain underused in Europe.
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Grain legumes are a source of high-quality protein for human consumption (e.g. beans, lentils, peas, chickpeas, faba beans) and animal feed in the form of seeds (e.g. peas, horse beans, soybeans, lupins) or fodder (e.g. alfalfa, clover).
Because of a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, grain legumes are able to utilise atmospheric nitrogen, and therefore do not need nitrogen-containing fertilisers. This reduces the amount of fossil fuel - and associated CO2 emissions - used in fertiliser production, transport and spreading. However, partly for historical reasons, grain legumes are underused in Europe, which imports 70% to 75% of its plant protein needs, mainly in the form of soybeans, from Brazil, Argentina and the United States.
The European interdisciplinary GLIP project, coordinated by T.H. Noel Ellis (Norwich, United Kingdom) was launched in 2004 to increase knowledge in grain legume biology, cultivation and use, in order to remove the technical barriers that hamper their development in Europe. The main results on the nutritional and agricultural qualities of grain legumes were presented at the Lisbon conference, held from 12 to 16 November 2007.
Quantifying the nutritional advantages of legumes
Researchers showed that grain legumes grown in Europe are a good potential food source for livestock. They also developed fractionation methods for grain legume flour, which would allow production of protein-enriched feed suitable for aquaculture use.
Understanding protein accumulation in seeds
The major factors and components in the accumulation of proteins in the seeds and their assimilation by livestock were characterised, using agriculturally-valuable species such as the pea as well as the model legume Medicago truncatula.
Characterising agriculturally-valuable genes
Researchers also characterised the genes involved in genetic resistance to parasites and pathogens in peas, horse beans and chickpeas, and - where identification proved too difficult in crop species - in the model species Medicago truncatula.
The research also led to the identification of five new genes in the pea. The genes play an important role in controlling plant architecture, which in turn conditions many responses such as disease progression, competition for resources, and control of seed formation time.
Positive economic and environmental findings
Using life cycle analysis methods, researchers were able to see a larger picture of the effects of introducing grain legumes in the crop rotations of different regions in Europe. They showed that the overall results - energetic, financial and environmental - are positive, and identified the necessary conditions for optimising these results.
The development of genomic tools at the foundation of these results
To identify the genes involved in the key stages of legume development (seed formation, pathogen resistance, etc.), the project’s researchers produced genomic and post-genomic tools. INRA was a major player in several of these:
- Participation in the sequencing of the genome for the model species Medicago truncatula, which has a smaller genome. Two chromosomes were sequenced by European teams, in France (INRA and Génoscope) and the UK (John Innes Centre and Sanger Institute).
- Creation of a collection of M. truncatula mutants to characterise the function of identified "candidate" genes. Three complementary methods were developed by teams from INRA, CNRS and the John Innes Institute: (i) deletion (elimination of a DNA fragment), (ii) gene tagging (using an easily-spotted transposable element), and (iii) spot mutations.
- Creation by INRA teams of a collection of pea mutants and genome cloning in BAC vectors. Pea genes controlling certain agricultural characteristics were thus identified. |
Coordinated international action
Genomic tools for legumes were developed in a spirit of constant international coordination. In particular, there was a prior agreement between the countries to use common bioinformatic tools to process genomic data. This processing consisted in identifying genes and their presumed functions by comparison with the known genomes of other organisms. The automatic annotation and analysis system has already allowed researchers to identify over 40,000 possible genes in M. truncatula.
This coordinated approach is a world first for grain legumes. Moreover, one of the programme's thrusts is dedicated to coordination, training and transfer, giving participants access to the platforms and the many genetic and genomic resources created for the project, and allowing them to put these to good use. During the project, the partnership was extended to teams from countries outside the European Union (Brazil, China, Egypt, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, South Africa, Russia and Tunisia) with experience in the study of legumes. They were thus able to work with European research teams and gain access to the resources developed by GLIP. Finally, a Grain Legumes Technology Transfer Platform (GL-TTP) was set up with the help of industrial partners to facilitate the interaction between users.
Future opportunities
The GLIP project has established networks of interdisciplinary collaboration that have brought together specialists from complementary disciplines who have learnt to speak a common language. Legume research will be made much easier thanks to technology platforms and genetic and genomic resources that have been developed as part of the project. These tools will have a leading role to play in rising to the new challenges of agriculture in Europe - that is, satisfying not only food requirements but also needs in both biomass and bioenergy. These objectives can be attained in an environmentally-friendly manner only by expanding the land area used for grain legumes - in other words, including them in crop rotations. The resources created during GLIP should increase the use of grain legumes (e.g. peas, horse beans) as well as fodder legumes (e.g. alfalfa and clover), and woody legumes like Robinia for short-rotation coppices.
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Written by :
INRA press service, phone: +33 (0)1 42 75 91 69
Contacts :
GLIP Project Coordinator:
T.H. Noel Ellis, John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom, Noel.ellis@bbsrc.ac.uk
Scientific Contact in France:
Jean Dénarié, Head, “Genetic and Genomic Tools” module, centre INRA de Toulouse,
Jean.Denarie@toulouse.inra.fr
GLIP communications contact:
Anne Schneider, AEP, Paris, a.schneider-aep@prolea.com
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