Source: VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE submitted to NRP
ENHANCED MID-ATLANTIC SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-PROTEIN AND STRESS TOLERANT FABA BEAN FOR WINTER PRODUCTION
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031445
Grant No.
2023-51181-41163
Cumulative Award Amt.
$2,664,745.00
Proposal No.
2023-05670
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2023
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2027
Grant Year
2023
Program Code
[SCRI]- Specialty Crop Research Initiative
Recipient Organization
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
(N/A)
BLACKSBURG,VA 24061
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Our long-term goal is to successfully introduce faba bean as a fall/winter crop with multiple nutritional, environmental, and economical benefits that can make the cropping systems in the mid-Atlantic more sustainable. This will be achieved through identification and further development of winter hardy faba beans with suitable agronomic and quality characteristics for conventional and organic production. This crop with superior nitrogen fixation is an early foraging source for honey bees. We will apply cutting edge genetics and phenomics tools, i.e. DNA-based SNP markers and UAV-based aerial imaging, starting from a 500+ variety panel. This will be followed with optimization of agronomic practices on selected varieties. Nutritional value and consumer acceptance, i.e. seed chemical composition and sensory qualities, will be evaluated on selected varieties recommended for production and further breeding. Extension evaluations in grower fields and across multiple locations in the region will be organized later in the project. With this project, we will set the basis of a trans-disciplinary effort on breeding, genomics, phenomics, agronomics, economics, and stakeholder participation to carry on the current and future research on faba beans. Concurrently, extension programs and communications with industry and local farmer markets will be put in place from year 1 to disseminate research results in the form of on-farm trials, field days, production guides and publications, and digital media. This proposal is relevant to the SCRI strategic goals of maximizing the ability of American producers to prosper economically and strengthen the stewardship of private lands through technology and research.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
50%
Developmental
20%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
20204301081100%
Knowledge Area
202 - Plant Genetic Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0430 - Climate;

Field Of Science
1081 - Breeding;
Goals / Objectives
Our long-term goal is to successfully introduce faba bean as a fall/winter crop with multiple nutritional, environmental, and economical benefits that can make the cropping systems in the mid-Atlantic more sustainable. With this project, we will set the basis of a trans-disciplinary effort on breeding, genomics, phenomics, agronomics, economics, and stakeholder participation to carry on the current and future research on faba beans. Our current overarching goal is to identify and further develop winter-hardy faba bean populations to complement the current commercial and certified organic production systems in the Mid-Atlantic with (a) a high-protein green and dry vegetable crop for plant-based products and human consumption, (b) superior nitrogen fixation that integrates into current rotations/intercropping systems, and (c) soil-benefic and early pollinator foraging source. We will achieve this goal through multi-disciplinary approaches to address the following objectives:1. Identify faba beans suitable for production in the Mid-Atlantic from a panel of 500+ varieties and development of open-pollinated synthetic cultivars and lines.2. Develop tools for cultivar development, crop management, and reduced environmental footprint through genomics and phenomics including DNA-based SNP markers, high-throughput phenotyping and machine learning.3. Define the major production and environmental concerns and benefits associated with farmers' adoption of faba bean as a new seed and vegetable crop in the Mid-Atlantic, including commercial and certified organic production.4. Optimize the agronomic practices for improved economics of faba bean commercial and certified organic production in the Mid-Atlantic.5.Develop extension education and evaluation, focusing on multiple communication strategies targeting the vertically-integrated production chain to reach a maximum number of stakeholders.
Project Methods
Field studies will be conducted at multiple locations on-station and on-farm in North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Marryland. Objective-specific trials will be executed. For example, to adress part of Objectives 1 and 2, when seed is limited (years 1 and 2), single row plots will be designed.Each row will be 10-ft. long with 30" row spacing and 2-3 plants per linear ft. Planting will occur in Oct 2023 and estimated harvest of dry seed will occur in June 2023. Before planting, seed will be treated with a slurry of Guard-N® inoculant (Vardesian NUE Solutions ™, Cary NC). The rates of NPK fertilizer will be applied based on soil test results and following the Mid-Atlantic Commercial Vegetable Production Recommendations (Wyenandt et al., 2022) for snap beans. Dual Magnum (S-metolachlor) applied preplant incorporated (PPI) at a rate of 1 pint per acre will be utilized for weed control and one spray of Karate (lambda-cyhalothrin) will be applied at flowering, if needed, to control corn earworm and other insect pests. Data collection will focus on days to emergence, stand count, seedling vigor, freeze damage and leaf frost susceptibility (Sallam et al., 2017), days to beginning flowering, days to canopy closure, lodging, dry down, and days to maturity. Wilting, if observed, will be visually rated during May and June. Plots will be continuously monitored for insect pests and disease (Obj. 3.1.). After the frost-free date, winter hardiness will be determined from the number of surviving plants. Genotypes with ≥ 50% surviving plants at all locations will be further evaluated for the agronomic traits in years 2-4, assuming that survival may be influenced by other environmental and management factors and, in different years, survival rate may be higher. Based on preliminary data (please see iii in Introduction), we anticipate that approximately 20 lines from the 500+ accessions will have over 50% winter survival in the Mid-Atlantic. The agronomic traits will include plant height, leaf area index, dry biomass at harvest, number of pods and seed per plant, dry seed weight per plant, 100-seed weight, pod and seed size, and harvest index. These parameters will also be used in connection with Obj. 2 Task 1 & 2. In year 1, all seed will be collected dry for seed multiplication.Each year, plantings will occur in mid-October and plots will be harvested in June of the following year. In year 2, dry seed will be primarily collected to provide a sufficient seed stock for planting agronomic trials in years 3 and 4 under Obj. 3 & 4. In years 2 through 4, samples of pods and seed will be randomly picked for seed chemical composition analysis and sensory evaluations. During year 2, combinations of 4-6 faba bean lines identified as winter-hardy in Obj. 1.1. Task 1 will be grown in isolation plots to develop SYN-1 cultivars.These cultivars will be evaluated for their performance in replicated field trials.Given that the duration of this effort is four years, it will not be possible to conduct a full breeding program.Nutritional and sensory analysis will be performed at the Virginia Tech's Food Science and Technology Lab. Protein, oil, and carbohydrate content, and v-c at Virginia Tech's Food Science and Technology Lab. Perkin-Elmer Inframatic 9500 NIR Grain Analyzers will be used to measure seed protein, oil, and carbohydrates. For v-c content, a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method originally published by Quemener et al. (1982) and improved by Quemener (1988) will be used.Sensory tests will be performed in years 3 and 4 to assess consumer acceptability of selected faba bean overwintering genotypes. Sensory participants (50 ≤ N ≤ 100 adult volunteers, untrained) will use a traditional 9-point hedonic scale (1 = "dislike extremely"; 9 = "like extremely") to evaluate overall liking of shelled, cooked faba beans. Samples (maximum of 6 per test to avoid fatigue) will be identified using 3-digit codes and served in a monadic random order to minimize bias.To develop genetic markers, we propose to laveragethe recently developed pseudomolecule level genome assembly for Hedin /2 from the International Faba Bean Genome Consortium (IFBGC, Aarhus) and develop genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approaches to identify high-density SNPs for genetic discovery. Then we will use this platform to genotype the germplasm panel of 500+ faba bean varieties, and conduct genome wide association studies with key agronomic traits within this panel. identification of appropriate restriction enzyme (RE) will be based on select 10-20 phenotypically diverse lines.We will use the GATK pipeline to identify high-quality SNPs from the germplasm panel. Finally, toassociate SNPs with our agronomic traits (winter hardiness, vigor, and biotic & abiotic stress resistance) we will conduct multi-trait genome wide association studies (GWAS).Phenomic tools will be based ona total of 20 imaging missions during the experimental cycle each year using two small UASs. The flight missions will be conducted around solar noon (± 2h) and corroborated with ground evaluations. Vegetation indices will be extracted and compared with the direct measurements.Finally, we will develop and evaluate a range of statistical and machine learning (ML) models to quantify individual and interactive effects of genotype, planting time, weather (air temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, rainfall, and relative humidity), soil climate (soil temperature and moisture), and remotely sensed crop information to predict physiologic, agronomic, and seed quality traits. The statistical models will include: stepwise linear regression, partial least square regression, and LASSO regression. ML models will include among others random forest, logistic regression, support vector machine, artificial neural network (ANN), K-nearest neighbor, and long short-term memory.Data accumulated in years 1 & 2 will be used for model formulation, training (70%), and testing (30%), while data acquired over the 3rd year will be used for model validations and refinements.To determine early pollinator foraging on faba bean, methods from from Marzinzig et al. (2018) will be adapted. Briefly, we will utilize transect walks (i.e., fixed distance routes where the observer moves at a set slow pace through the field and records bees visiting plants) to determine bee species abundance and foraging behavior (e.g., flower visitation, nectar robbing, extrafloral nectary visitation). Observations will be taken during flowering (>10% of plants with flowers) when foraging is likely (>15?, no rain or high winds).Agronomic prectices will be tested using 20 advanced selections from years 1 & 2, 5 lines with the highest yield and protein, seed quality, and early vigor to be used for the agronomic trials under Obj. 4.1. and 4.2. MD, VA and NC, in years 3&4. These trials will be on-station and with on-farm collaborators, and will evaluate important production parameters including at a minimum germination, growth, pod set, winter survival, pest pressure, foliar disease, growth type, dry down, and lodging. These lines will be also evaluated for sensory analysis in year 4. From these lines, we anticipate that 2 or 3 will be recommended for commercial and/or certified organic production by the end of this project.Economic assessment will be performed through construction ofrepresentative budgets for conventional and certified organic production based on agronomic field trials in years 3 & 4.Monte Carlo simulations will also be conducted using @RISK and GAMS to identify risks associated with faba bean production. Representative budgets only provide a single estimate of production cost and do not account for changes in input costs which can vary greatly from year to year.Monte Carlo simulations allow for almost all possible outcomes of production to be examined and provide the likelihood of each outcome.

Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:Growers that are interested in growing faba bean as winter crop for dry seed production. Vegetable growers interested in production of succulent stage harvested faba beans for fresh market sales. Vegetable growers and processors interested in production of succulent stage harvested faba beans for freezing. Extension Agents Faba bean breeders and breeding programs. Changes/Problems:The recurrent selection breeding strategy which was attempted in 2025 will not be used in the future because of minimal outcrossing in the field and minimal pollinator activity in our faba fields. Low levels of outcrossing in the field are conducive to use of a pedigree breeding strategy, which we have implemented with the creation of biparental populations from crosses made in winter 2024-25. Computer vision and deep learning models are data-hungry approaches that require a huge number of annotated images. Image annotation is a manual process for identifying plants, weeds, and distinguishing both in the images acquired. This is a highly intensive and tedious task. In order to process all the acquired images (~est. 70,000) and produce deliverables on time, additional personnel help will be needed to accelerate image annotations and accomplish end goals. To meet this, we plan to seek help from temporary personnels with a background in advanced image processing. A major concern identified in all states, was the limited number of commercially available cultivars to allow for sufficient seed needed to address objectives 3 and 4. Last year, we decided to commence the agronomic studies sooner than originally proposed. Seed of selected and suitable overwintering lines from the faba panel used under objective 1 is being increased (some lines had 80 to 100% survival rate even under conditions of an exceptionally hard winter like in 2024-2025), but currently there is not sufficient seed for testing in large agronomic studies at multiple locations and in replicated trials. Commercially available cultivars like Felix, the variety used by most PI, survived winter at a very low level and/or the seed had a large percentage of mixture with winter peas, and, because of this, several trials were discarded. To overcome this issue, in 2024-2025 we started increasing the seed of the most winter hardy and high yielding lines. For example, at Tidewater AREC, 20 lines were seed-increased, and 1 to 3 pounds of seed was collected from each to allow planting large plots in 2025. Seed collected from these plots will be sufficient to accommodate multi locations and replicated agronomic trials in the fall of 2026, and this will fully address the objectives and the timeline of the project. We also visited the Crop Development Center, the faba bean breeding program in Aug 2024 and obtained under MTA 20 pounds each of two CDC faba cultivars, Snowdrop and CDC 219-16, that were used in fall plantings in 2024. However, these CDC cultivars had 50% or less winter survival in 2024-2025. This shows that, for the growers in the mid-Atlantic interested in growing winter faba bean, availability of winter-hardy lines identified through this project is critically important. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Four graduate student are receiving training on plant disease diagnostics, entomology, food science, and computer science and data management.Two newely hired graduate students are receiving training in genomics and plant breeding. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Grower field day presentation about the Faba Bean Project at the Carvel Crops Field Day on August 14, 2025, Georgetown, DE. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The annual meeting of the faba project conveied on Aug 7, 2025, at the Tidewater AREC. All PIs and their graduates students participated and presented the up-to-date results. The meeting was from 9 AM trough 2:30 PM with one hour of discussions following presentations on the year 3 plans. Below is the summary of this discussions. Food Science team will need 300-400 g per sample for sensory analysis. They are concerned that the project requires sensory analysis in year 3 and there is not enough seed available for planting and sharing. However, Emmalea and Alejandro will coordinate with Renata as they may potentially have seed to spare. When sensory information becomes available, Madhvi will include it on an Extension paper on nutritional properties of faba bean, she plans to write. Agronomy team (Ben, Joseph, David S., Maria, and Abhilash) will coordinate trials on seeding rate, planting date, row spacing, and weed control. Generic "Sprouting" seed from True Leaf Market will be used (seed needs to be purchased soon by individual researchers). Nitrogen intervention seems to make more sense if the addition of nitrogen on top of inoculation is tested (Joseph and Maria will coordinate these trials). Variety and Genomic team will resample for DNA again to better match the phenotype and genotype (original seed was mixed for most lines and separation of phenotypes is needed). For the UAV data share, David H. will create a shared space on Google Drive.Coordination by David H., Frank and Rahul. Disease team will continue working by the graduate student including repetition of the fungicide efficacy for Chocolate spot disease. This is important for including on a faba bean production guide in the end of the project. It was suggested that this team starts working with companies for registration of the most effective fungicides, if they are not yet registered for faba bean. Insect team will continue sampling across all projects for insects visiting the crop. The most important aspects are the lack of insect pest posing agronomic concerns and the fact that most visiting bees seem to not have a significant role in cross pollination. This information will be validated in year 3. Economics team will continue to develop base budget models for green bean production by close collaboration with Emmalea and Alejandro. These budgets were very important for the grower and Faba Advisory Committee member Mr. Hunter Richardson, who attended the meeting. But Hunter could not fully understand as the discussion moving from dry to greenbeenproduction lost him. Ford is planning for an Extension publication, from which Hunter and other farmers will better understand the economics for this crop. Grower trials will be simple, just to demonstrate the potential of faba growing rather than research trials. Mr. Richardson will dedicate 3 acres for growing faba in fall 2025. This is an area where he cannot grow any other crop because of deer pressure; he considers this a plus towards farmers' option to grow this crop in the future. Thus far we have not noticed any deer damage/presence on any of the faba trials at any location.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Two Oct-planted overwintering trials of accessions obtained from the USDA faba bean collection have been conducted at the University of Delaware's Adams Research Farm in Georgetown, Delaware. Two additional Oct-planted trials were planted at the Tidewater AREC and Easter Virginia AREC. Measurements were taken on stand count (Dec to Apr), winter survival, vigor, greenness after hard freezes in Jan and Feb 2025, beginning blooming, pod setting and beginning maturity, and seed yield and yield components. Spectral vegetation indices were also collected through vegetation to estimate biomass accumulation. The yield and plant survival data from the 2024-25 trial is being used to identify the most winter-hardy lines from the large and small seed classes for use as parents in the breeding programs.Twenty accessions from the 500+ faba panel with high winter survival and yield in 2023 and 2024 were analyzed for nutritional/antinutritional components, including protein, vicine, convicine, moisture and ash content, and physical properties (length, breadth and width). In Nov 2024, the best performing large-seeded accessions from the 2023-24 trials were planted in the greenhouses at the UD and TAREC and a crossing protocol was developed. F1 seed was obtained from ten successful crosses. In addition to the controlled crossing/pedigree breeding strategy, a recurrent selection strategy was attempted because of reports of high levels of outcrossing in faba bean in the literature. Two separate breeding blocks, one containing the best performing overwintered accessions and the other the best performing spring accessions were established in spring of 2025. However, little to no pollinator activity was observed in these breeding blocks despite proximity to multiple honeybee hives and the addition of a bumblebee hive next to the plot. Significant progress has been made this year, including the successful cultivation of 492 faba bean lines and the extraction of high-quality DNA in duplicate from each line.Collaborative efforts with Frank Reich (University of Delaware) are underway to expand the genetic diversity by incorporating additional European lines for sequencing. Through methodical optimization, ApeKI and MseI have been identified as the most effective restriction enzymes for marker generation in this system. To address the challenges posed by the large genome of faba bean, an enhanced genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) protocol is under development. High resolution (~ 0.2 cm/pixel) aerial RGB and Multispectral imagery were acquired throughout the growing seasons in 2024 and 2025 at three locations. Total acquired images were over 20,000. Deep learning models are being formulated and explored to develop a pipeline translating plant counts into spatial density maps that will be useful to growers and breeders for assessing efficiency in crop germination. Similarly, apipeline will be developed to translate weed identifications into spatial weed density maps that will be useful to growers and breeders for planning precision weed management operations, and high-throughput dry-down/maturity estimation techniques using agroclimatic data. Chocolate spot appears to be the primary disease affecting faba bean field trials in the Mid-Atlantic region. However, we are currently investigating which Botrytis species is responsible for the disease. Using species-specific primer sets we initially identified most of our isolates, by PCR amplicon size, as B. fabiopsis. Because of raised concerns of non-target amplification with this primer set, so we also tested their modified version. A fungicide efficacy field trial was established at the Eastern Shore AREC in Painter, VA. The trial was conducted using spring-planted faba beans (planted on 3/13/25). Disease pressure from natural inoculum was moderate with 83% incidence and 20% severity in nontreated plots. All fungicides but Decree (Fenhexamid) had lower disease incidence than the nontreated control.Miravis Prime, Luna Sensation, Topsin, Bravo, Merivon and Endura had lower disease incidence than Rovral, CaptEvate 68 WDG, and OSO. All fungicides reduced disease severity compared to the nontreated control. Miravis Prime, Luna Sensation, Topsin, Bravo, Merivon and Endura had lower disease severity than Rovral, CaptEvate 68 WDG, OSO and Decree. No phytotoxicity was observed in any of the fungicide treatments.For insect-related research objectives, faba bean field trials were planted at the Hampton Roads AREC in Oct 2024and Apr 2025 with cultivar 'Aquadulce' in 6 ft beds with plastic covers and drip irrigation. Insect pests and pollinator presence observations were collected from all trials at the HRAREC and four other collaborators' fields in Virgnia. Visual scouts were performed at the linear foot level for pest, and at the transect level for pollinators. Overall, 22 insect taxa were present in faba bean trials, including up to 5 different types of pollinators. The key herbivoresthat have the potential to be key pest while cultivating this crop are aphids and stink bugs. Bumble bees were the most abundant pollinator in this crop. In Oct 2024 and Mar 2025, replicated yield trials were established at UD's Adams research farm including 5 commercially availablevarieties, 3 were large-seeded and 2 were seeded agronomic types. Dry seed was harvested from the overwintered plots and succulent seed from the spring planted types. Excellent yield was obtained from the three commercial vegetable types in the spring trial.At the Eastern Virginia AREC in Warsaw, VA, a fall test was planted at 3 dates (Oct 15, Oct 25, Nov 6), two varieties (Organic Sprouting, Felix), and 3 seeding rates (120,000, 160,000, 200,000 seeds per acre). A second study was planted on Oct. 25 to examine the effect of different in-season N rates on yield using variety Felix.The planting date and N rate trials were replicated at the Tidewater AREC. In summary, planting date did not have any statisticcaly significant effect on yield at Warsaw but had a significant effect at the most sothern location, Suffolk, VA. At this location, yield averaged 27 bu/A in Oct planting but less than 5 bu/A in Nov planting.For the N intervention, 3 N application dates (pre-plant, Feb 1 and Mar 1) and seven N rates (30, 90-application at 3 dates, 90-application at 2 dates, 120, 150, 180, and 210 lb N/A) were used. Plots were planted with Organic Sprouting.Seed was not inoculated with rhizobia at planting. The highest yield of 30 bu/A was obtained when 180 lb N/A were used.UMD conducted three field research trials in the winter/spring of 2024/25 to evaluate on the agronomic and cultural growing methods of four cultivars of faba bean (Greencover, Sprouting, Snowdrop and Fanfare). Two sites were located on a collaborating farm operation in Mechanicsville, MD and the third at the UMD Central Maryland Research and Education Center (UMD-CMREC) in Upper Marlboro, MD. Each trial was planted utilizing a complete randomized block design with four replications. Faba bean established well in both fall and spring plantings. A vacuum planter worked well for singulation of seed and seed placement. Key findingsinclude (a) the fall planted trial experienced high winter mortality following the unusual cold weather (6oF) in Jan; (b) the early spring planted trial performed well with easy establishment, rapid plant growth and pod set in May and early June. Harvest was able to occur in early July; (c) the late spring planted trial performed poorly and, while plots established well, plants failed to set pods;(d) the 2024 work provided insights into ideal planting windows, insect, weed and disease pest pressure, pre and post herbicide performance, growth habit, and potential yield for green and dry bean; (e) key success factors that will require further research include weed control, management of foliar diseases particularly later in the season, row spacing to optimize yield, and winter survival.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Rivera, D., A. I. Del Pozo-Valdivia, and T. Kuhar. 2025. Efficacy of In-Furrow Insecticides for Control of Seed-corn Maggot in Fava Bean in Virginia, 2024. Arthropod Management Tests. 50 (1), tsaf111.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Leo, J. and A. I. Del Pozo-Valdivia. 2025. Faba beans as a cover crop in the Mid-Atlantic. Poster presentation. Virgina Tech Graduate Student Symposium. Blacksburg, VA.
  • Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Jjagwe, P., Chandel, A., Balota, M. and Raman, R., 2025, May. Faba bean crop plant identification using aerial multispectral imagery and convolutional neural network-based deep learning models. In Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping (Vol. 13475, pp. 227-236). SPIE.
  • Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Singh, M., Balota, M., Huang, H., OKeefe, S., & Carneiro, R. (2025). Faba Bean: Unlocking Nutritional Potential and Agricultural Sustainability. Current Research in Food Science, 101136.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Jjagwe, P., Chandel, A. K., Balota, M., & Raman, R. (2025). Faba bean crop plant identification using aerial multispectral imagery and convolutional neural network-based computer vision models. SPIE Autonomous Air and Ground Sensing Systems for Agricultural Optimization and Phenotyping Conference, April 13-17, 2025. Orlando, FL.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Jjagwe, P., Chandel, A. K., Seetharaman, R., & Balota, M. (2025). Towards weed identification and management in Faba bean crop using aerial multispectral imagery and convolutional neural network-based computer vision models. 2025 AI in Agriculture Conference, March 31-April 2, 2025. Starkville, MS.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Singh, M., Balota, M., Huang Haibo, Carneiro, R., and OKeefe, S. Identifying Safe and Nutritious Winter-Hardy Fava Bean Genotypes for U.S. Production. Presented at: a. 2025 IFT FIRST, Chicago, IL, July 13-16, 2025 (poster); b. 2025 FST Student Research Competition, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, April 25, 2025 (oral presentation); c. 2025 CAIA's Big Event, Virginia Tech, May 05, 2025 (poster).


Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences that benefit from this project include breeders, fellow scientists, certified seed producers, and agricultural producers. Regularly, these audiences are updated on the achievements of this project. Graduate students and post-doc working on this project will benefit through the opportunity to produce knowledge and grow professionally. Currently, one Ph.D. graduate student and one post-doc have been involved with the project from the beginning, and they started in Oct 2023, when the first tests were planted, and in Jan 2024, respectively. Additionally, 2 graduate students have been recently employed and will continue their training and graduate research in relation to this project in the areas of plant pathology and entomology. Through participation in graduate student competitions at professional and extension meetings, and publications, these students will represent an important venue for information produced by this project to be timely distributed to the stakeholders. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One graduate student, Ph.D. level, was hired last summer (2023) to address the phenotypic task of objective 2. He is now completing the course work at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. A post-doc was hired in Jan 2024 to be the manager of this project. This individual has expertise in agronomy and remote sensing and this project will allow him to expand this expertise with new experiences (new crop and agronomics) during the 4 years of this project. Recently 2 new additional MS students were identified to work on the entomology and pathology objectives of the project after fulfilling the course work requirements. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A zoom workshop has been scheduled with growers in the King and Quin Co., VA, on aspects of faba production. The County Extension Agent contacted our team because faba seems to be of recent interest for the community in this county. Similarly, Extension Agent from Prince William Co. VA, had interest and grew faba as a winter crop in his Master Gardners' demonstration garden. Similar interest was shown by a Master Gardner in Christiansburg, VA, and she contacted our team with interest at being part of the research team. She eventually accepted to serve on the Faba Advisory Committee. Our research team member, Bean Beale, from Maryland also cultivated faba in 2023-2024 winter season for a seed company. Contacts have been made and interest exists for this crop for production in the mid-Atlantic. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan on moving along with this project as planned. Probably the difference from the proposal is that agronomic studies will start one year sooner than we planned. For these studies, available commercial cultivars will be used until our breeding team produced enough seed of the most successful accession or new cultivars to be tested. We also contacted the faba bean breeder at the University of Saskatchewan, Crop Development Centre, for germplasm exchange, released cultivar and breeding lines. The PD has scheduled a visit to CDC for this purpose Aug 12 through 16, 2024.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? 492 accessions were evaluated at theVirginia State University (VSU), Carvel Research & Education Center (CREC), and Tidewater AREC (TAREC).Due to limited seed, single row plots of 7-feet long with 2 plants per linear ft were plantedon Oct 18, 10 and 9 2023, respectivelyin a lattice design.Harvest of dry seed was from May through end June, with most entries producing fully mature seed in mid-May and mid-June. Before planting, seeds were treated with a granular inoculant from Johnny' s Selected Seeds. A rate of 60-40-80 NPK fertilizer was applied based on soil test results and following the Mid-Atlantic Commercial Vegetable Production Recommendations for snap beans at the Tidewater AREC, but not at the other locations. Dual was applied right after planting at a rate of 1 pint/A at CREC, but not at the other locations, where weeding has rather done by hand. Data on stand count, seedling vigor, freeze damage and leaf frost susceptibility, and flowering were collected. Stand counts were taken weekly in Oct-Dec at all locations. From this information the days to beginning and maximum emergence, beginning flowering, and beginning maturity were calculated along with the growth degree days to reach these growth stages using the weather data. Wilting and lodging were not observed on any of the plots and locations in 2024, therefore these data were not collected.In April 2024 winter hardiness was determined. The agronomic traits collected included plant height, number of pods and seed per plant, dry seed weight per plant, and 100-seed weight. At eachlocation, plots similar in size and seeding rate were planted again in mid-March 2024. This planting was envisioned to provide information of faba suitability as a spring crop. This planting was harvested for dry seed only at TAREC and CREC in early July. In general, the crop performed well at all locations. We learned that viable inoculant, weed control at planting, and early management of Chocolate spot diseaseare three main keys for successful faba crop production in the mid-Atlantic. Chocolate spot was more prevalent in Virginia than in Delaware. Beginning emergence was after 2 to 3 weeks after planting in the fall and 2 weeks in spring planting. Emergence was more uniformin the fall than in spring planting. This was probably because of more rainfall and cooler temperatures in Marchthat might have caused seedling dump-off. Seed damage before emergence due to seed maggots was also noted for the spring planting, in particular in fields located in urban areas. This result was general across all locations and, consequently, the number of accessions producing seed was higher in fall than in spring planting. For the fall planting, beginning flowering was observed on a few accessions on Dec 122023at TAREC where, by Jan 30th,50% of accessions bloomed. At CREC, 50% blooming was recorded on March 18. 50% winter survival was recorded for 165 accessions at TAREC, 208 at CREC, and 24% at VSU. Accessions with 80% or more winter survival counted 26 at TAREC, 42 at CREC and 3 at VSU. Winter survival was determined as the ratio of number of surviving plants on April 8, April 1, and April 18 for TAREC, CREC and VSU, respectively, from the maximum emerged seedling in Dec or Jan at each location. 311 accessions produced seed at TAREC, 76 at VSU and almost all 492 at CREC. Some surviving plants were lost due to disease and others bloomed but did not produce pods. Approximately 45 accessions produced enough seed for replicated trials and multiple location planting in 2024, from which around 20 have enough seed for multiplication in larger plots. Data are in the process of analysis. The accessions in spring planting were harvested during the first week of July 2024, at approximately 100 days after planting. They seemed to begin blooming and reach physiological maturity at more similar times in comparison with the fall planting. Several entries bloomed but did not produce seed. The number of seed produced during this planting system was significantly lower than for the fall planting, even though the spring planting plants were regularly, every 7 to 10 days, sprayed for Chocolate spot, unlike the fall planting. Leaf tissue was collected from 482 entries from the VSU fall planting for DNA extraction. However, the quality of extracted DNA was not satisfactory. Because of this, 6 seeds from each of the 492 entries have been made available to the responsible Co-PI. The seed will be planted in pots in the greenhouse for collection of new leaf tissue and extraction of DNA. Several flight missions were conducted at all three locations from Nov through May to collect plot images from bot plantings: 3 at VSU, 5 at CREC, and 14 at TAREC. Th reason why there were fewer flights missions at CREC and VSU was because of the unavailability of drones at these locations so that images were collected solely by Co-PIs at TAREC. It was also related to the difference in planting date, e.g. later planting date at VSU was closer to early seasonal frosts for which the germination and early plant growth were delayed. At the same time, ground data of stand count, plant height, and weed identification were taken. A graduate student will be responsible for developing machine learning models to predict stand count, crop water stress, and identify predominant weed species that a grower will need to know to effectively control weeds in a faba crop. At the same time, images will be used for model development related to frost damage, disease pressure, and plant growth. Co-PIsvisited regularly the variety plots and rated the disease, chocolate spot, severity, and aphid infestation. Insect pests did not seem problematic for either the fall or spring planting and, in addition, beneficial insects seemed to control the pest problematic species very well. For example, during the ground measurements, we noticed a relatively large number of lady beetles on the faba plants. Disease on the other hand, Chocolate spot and seedling dump off, were severe and will require detailed testing for how to be controlled in the future. In the proposal, we planned disease and insect trials for years 3 and 4. Even though agronomic studies were planned for years 3 and 4 in the proposal, a few Co-PIs started experiments to address this objective in 2023 and 2024. One experiment addressed the effect of planting geometry, i.e. double rows versus single rows, and irrigation application, i.e. sprinkler versus drip irrigation, on green seed production. There were three harvests at approximately 10 days interval. Aguadulce and Broad Windsor commercial and large seeded cultivars were used. These cultivars, included in the 492 accessions tested above, were planted in the first week of October and harvests were in May and June at the Virginia Tech' s Hampton Roads AREC, in Virginia Beach, VA. This test showed that double row planting and sprinkler irrigation produced better and healthier plants than single rows and drip irrigation. Also, seeds germinated, and seedlings emerged faster when irrigated by sprinkler than drip tape. A second test was aimed at looking at the effect of spring planting date, seeding rate and row spacing on yield of a commercially available small seeded faba cultivar. The experimental design included 4 planting dates, 2 in April and 2 in May, 3 row spacing, 7.5', 15', and 30', and 3 seeding rates, 120K, 160K and 200K. Unfortunately, a cool and wet April followed by severe drought in May and June resulted in ununiform stands and inconclusive results. This test will be repeated in fall 2024 at the same location of the Eastern Virginia AREC in Warsaw, VA. An extension publication was produced along with several connections with growers interested in faba bean. A zoom meeting is scheduled for Aug 29 for the faba working team members to virtually meet with growers and address questions related to how to grow this crop in the mid-Atlantic.

Publications

  • Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Ranam, R., Balota, M., Chandel, A., and Jjagew. P. 2024. Faba bean: a multi-purpose crop for the mid-Atlantic USA. Virginia Cooperative Extension Publication. https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/content/dam/pubs_ext_vt_edu/spes/spes-590/SPES-590.pdf
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2024 Citation: Raman, R., Balota, M., and Ernest E. 2024. Effect of Germination Rate on Winter Survival and Seed Number per Plant of 500 Faba Bean Genotypes Grown in the Mid-Atlantic. Oral presentation at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual meeting, San Antonio, TX, Nov 10-13, 2024.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Submitted Year Published: 2024 Citation: Raman, R., Balota. M., Ernest, E., Jjagwe, P., and Chandel, A. 2024.UAS Remote Sensing to Detect Germination Rate and Survival of 500 Faba Bean Genotypes Grown in the Mid-Atlantic. Poster at the SA-CSSA-SSSA Annual meeting, San Antonio, TX, Nov 10-13, 2024.