Pea Genetics and Breeding

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is devoted to research on genetics and breeding in cultivated pea, Pisum sativum. The importance of pea and other grain legumes in the Anthropocene era cannot be overstated. Their value as food crops and livestock feeds is due to their high protein content and the beneficial impact they have on associated cereal crop yields, whether following in rotation or intercropped. This positive agronomic effect comes from symbiotic nitrogen fixation.

Agronomic and nutritional characteristics still require significant improvement to ensure crop productivity and quality in a changing climate. These traits are among the targets of current studies in pea where the Mendelization of quantitative trait loci is revealing their underlying genetic basis. New genomic resources, particularly high-throughput genotyping technologies and genome sequencing, are accelerating these discoveries.

Historically, pea qualifies as one of the original model organisms, having been used by Mendel for his studies on inheritance in the nineteenth century. As the contributions to this Issue show, pea continues to augment our general understanding of plant genetics, and specifically of legume agronomic and nutritional traits, which leads in turn to valuable improvements in breeding.

Dr. Julie M. I. Hofer
Dr. Isabelle Lejeune-Henaut
Guest Editors

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