Posted 29 October 2004. Crop Management.

New Pinto Bean Now Resists Anthracnose Disease
 

Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture.

Washington, D.C. (October 27, 2004) — A new pinto bean germplasm line resistant to anthracnose is now available for use in developing new varieties of the legume crop.

Germplasm line USPT-ANT-1 harbors a single gene, Co-42, which confers resistance to the most-destructive races of Colletotrichum lindemuthianum, the fungus that causes anthracnose, notes Phil Miklas. A plant geneticist at the  Agricultural Research Service Vegetable and Forage Crops Production Research Unit, Prosser, Wash., he is handling seed requests.

In dry edible beans, athracnose causes disease symptoms that include
unsightly cankers on the plant stem, pods and seeds. Endemic to
Michigan, New York and other Great Lakes states, anthracnose most
recently emerged as a threat to 350,000 acres of susceptible pintos
grown in Minnesota and North Dakota. Those two states, plus Michigan,
produce about half the nation's $629 million dry edible bean crop.

Commercial pinto beans derived from the new germplasm line would be the first to resist anthracnose, according to Miklas. Chemical fungicides, clean-seed programs and sanitation are the standard control measures. But crop resistance is the keystone defense. To develop USPT-ANT-1, Miklas used marker-assisted selection, a gene-detecting technique that saves the time involved in infecting plants and then waiting to visually
check them for resistance traits. USPT-ANT-1 is the product of crosses,  and brackcrosses (used to eliminate undesirable traits), made among
established pinto bean cultivars, including Othello, Maverick and
Buster, with SEL 1308 providing the Co-42 gene.

In field trials, USPT-ANT-1 produced seed yields that were 107 and 90
percent of Othello at test sites in Prosser and Idaho, respectively.
USPT-ANT-1 also compared favorably to Buster, another commercial check variety. In those tests, the germplasm line reached its peak growth, or maturity, nine to 14 days later than Othello and four days later than
Buster.

Jim Kelly, at Michigan State University; Shree Singh, at the University
of Idaho; and Ken Grafton, at North Dakota State University, collaborated with Miklas on the pinto's development, testing and evaluation. 

Contact:

Jan Suszkiw

Agricultural Research Service, USDA

(301) 504-1630

jsuszkiw@ars.usda.gov