Development of Superior Rhizobium Strains to Support Biological Nitrogen Fixation in Dry Beans

Home > Research > Research Projects > Development of Superior Rhizobium Strains to Support Biological Nitrogen Fixation in Dry Beans

Crop

Start Date

2019

End Date

2022

Principal Investigator

Ivan Oresnik University of Manitoba

MPSG Financial Support

External Funding

Canadian Agricultural Partnership

Total Project Funding

File

Download File

Research Objectives

The objectives of this project is develop Rhizobium strains which are capable of providing symbiotically fixed nitrogen to dry beans such that the amount of nitrogen fertilizer can either be greatly reduced or eliminated.  The ability of growing dry beans without added nitrogen will both increase the profitability of the crop as well as reducing the ecological impact by reducing nitrogen run-off as well as reducing the amount of energy that is needed to produce nitrogen fertilizer.

Dry beans that are currently used often do not produce productive nodules with wild-type strains of Rhizobium etli or Rhizobium phaseoli.  We propose that the reason for this is that during the breeding of the bean varieties the ability to interact with Rhizobium has been altered, and that by using an adaptive evolutionary approach to continually select Rhizobium that can be more efficient at nodulation and nitrogen fixation can be used to overcome this problem.

Related Crops